Go, said the bird
by elwarre
Summary: Sam and reality have never been on the best of terms. A non-hunting AU. Primarily gen with minor Sam/Eve and Dean/Benny. Warnings for religious abuse, violence toward children, minor gore and smut, and shameless borrowing from T.S. Eliot. Betaed by my lovelies, alethiometry and lotrspnfangirl. Art by the marvelous quickreaver (more on her lj).
1. Chapter 1

_Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children_

Look carefully, down through the trees past the shadowed pond. The forest there quivers, yawns to an overlook, a jagged rock-face edged by sky and mountains. If you're lucky, if the sun burns cloudless and the wind lies still, you might see two little boys there, dancing. They'll clutch their hands together and spin, laughing, laughing.

Watch awhile and listen. You'll see the younger one stumble, scrape his baby-fat knee on a crooked tree root. His brother will kiss his tears away, murmur something in his ear. If the birds are quiet and your ears are young, you might make out his whispers: _Dance it away, Sammy. Sing it away_.

They're not there anymore, of course. Not for a long while. Nothing more than a memory's echo, now. But if you're patient, if you let time converge and drift through your fingers like smoke, you'll hear them.

A child's voice, a toddler's lisping mimicry, flickering over the mountains:

_ Here we go round the prickly pear  
__ Prickly pear prickly pear  
__ Here we go round the prickly pear  
__ At five o'clock in the morning_

* * *

1998 - North Carolina

_Anchor yourself to the basics._

He was fifteen. His name was Sam. He was seated in the kitchen of his father's cabin, schoolwork spread on the table before him. His hair was wild, his arms were skinny, and he was wrong, twisted, a violation.

_The basics._

His history textbook lay open in front of him. Sam hesitated, glanced at it. Lines of words marching to their end, black ink on crisp white paper—harmless, really, but Sam knew what it could do. He knew how the ink could dance, could dip and run and draw him away. How it could fog up the present and drop him someplace else, helpless.

This book dragged him to a grey street, a line of buildings on either side that gouged the sky like teeth. Alien eyes assessed him, peering through dirty windowpanes, around corners. He itched to run, shouldn't be here, he knew. This world was false, unreal. The air plugged his ears with cotton and coated his tongue with something slick and foul, but he pressed on, eager to taste, to feel. He needed to see the short skirts on painted women, the sharp heels that hobbled their ankles and bound them to the meager warmth of nameless beds. He needed to know the glittering eyes that prospered in this world, the broad figures in pinstripe suits that smelled of tobacco and whiskey and sandalwood.

Sam closed his eyes and saw lines of white powder on sticky tabletops, the shadow of gaslight and jazz and desperation. Children huddled in the corner, their faces blue with the press of winter, their voices drowned by the hiss of an impotent radiator. This world tasted of thin coffee and betrayal, and Sam was so deep in its tearing rhythms that he sensed neither his own rising bile nor the sound of the door closing behind him.

"Sam."

He jumped to his feet. The book slid from his hands and thudded on the floor, dust and bent pages and _clumsy so clumsy _and—

"Sir." _Your name is Sam. You're fifteen years old._

"Where's Dean?"

"Out cutting wood, sir." _You're in the kitchen; Dad is speaking._

"And you're in here, burning daylight, because?"

Sam swallowed. "I'm doing my homework, sir. The repeal of the Temperance Act, 1933, and what happened afterward—" His father eyed him sideways, and Sam's voice trailed off.

_Skinny. Dirty. Wrong._

"Daydreaming," John spat. "You check the fences? Finish the milking?" John read Sam's denial in his too white face and reddened it with the back of his hand. "Chores first, schoolwork later. You know that, boy. You think the Temperance Act is gonna keep out the coyotes or put food on your ungrateful table?"

Sam shook his head, resisting the urge to rub away the sting on his cheek.

"Then get on it, boy. Don't want to see you back here 'til your work is done." John settled heavily into the chair and kicked his feet up on the table, muddy boots and all.

Sam scurried to obey. The air outside was cold, and the sun hung low on the horizon. He should have known better than to put off his chores, should have known he'd get too submerged in his reading.

_Hold on to the facts; don't let go. _Dean's words, three years ago, his brother's face pinched and white with worry. _Hold on, Sammy. You gotta hold on._

He kicked up mud as he followed the length of the fencing, searching for holes or broken posts. The Winchesters' land wasn't large, but the grazing area for the family cow was entirely fenced in. He'd need to check the chicken wire, too, and the sheep in the barn, before he could turn to milking. By then it would be good and dark.

Sam bit his lip and sighed. The fences were fine; of course they were fine. They almost always were. A once-weekly check would be plenty. But when he'd complained to Dean, his brother had gone all wide-eyed and solemn and offered only the standard reminder that Dad knew best, Dad had been doing this a lot longer than they had, they needed to trust Dad.

As if Sam didn't know that.

Sam lingered outside the barn longer than he should, his eyes trained over the mountains to the south. Blue by day, nearly black at dusk, their peaks edged by the sapphire spread of sunset. The west was a flare of orange and crimson, painful even at the corners of his vision, and his toes were wet from damp earth seeping through the cracks in Dean's castoff boots.

"You should probably do something about me."

Sam startled, nearly fell, caught himself with one hand on the peeling wall of the barn. He squinted with the effort of searching in the twilight, but he was alone; there was no one, nothing.

"Fox in the henhouse and all that."

He followed the sound down to the rusting wire at the base of the coop, where a flurry of movement caught his attention. There, vague in the dimness, was a jaunty red fox, its compact muscles quivering with contained energy.

Sam checked off its features. Reddish tufts of fur. Slanted eyes, bright with glare from the setting sun. Tiny, mud-streaked paws crushing the heady scent from the patch of yarrow in which it stood. A straggler from his book-dream, most likely. _Hold on to the facts. _

"Thought you were supposed to be the smart one."

Sam snorted, disbelieving. Smart had never mattered for much.

The fox gave him a look that, if foxes could give meaningful looks, would have expressed vaguely put-upon tolerance. "Fine, then. I'll do the talking. Not much to say, anyway. Just wanted to tell you not to let your brother go on this next hunt. Bad news all around."

When Sam still didn't speak, the fox clicked his tongue. "Take my word for it or don't. Doesn't matter to me." And it was off, a brief flicker of orange and white, and then nothing.

Sam shook his head, wished he had some cold water to splash on his face, and slipped into the barn to deal with Rosie and the sheep.

* * *

Three days later, Dean packed up for the hunt with John and the rest of the men around town. Sam watched him go.

It was tradition, this great stag hunt every autumn, a charm against the icy grip of Appalachian winter. The men would bring back other things, too, squirrels and rabbits and maybe a few wild pigs if they were lucky. The meat would be salted and smoked and tallied with the meager stores of corn and potatoes and crumbly cheese to form what was in Sam's mind a much more practical promise of luck.

The hunt served also as a rite of passage. All the males in the village were welcomed along after the celebration of their eighteenth year, and most of them went, eager to win feminine favor with embellished tales of danger and hunting prowess.

Sam wasn't keen on joining the men—a dangerous thought, he knew, and one he wouldn't dare voice. Dean would just laugh at his softhearted brother, but John would either fume or slump in defeat at his waste of a son. Neither outcome was particularly desirable.

Time was, Sam would have curled against his brother at night, stripped his fear of its power by whispering it to Dean. But those days were gone, lost with the dissolving of Sam's childhood the year he'd turned twelve and Dean had looked away in disgust or fear or simple loss of interest, who knew. Whatever the cause, the bond they'd shared had been broken, and Dean had shifted to the corners of Sam's mind along with everyone else.

But Dean was still Dean, and the fierce love and admiration Sam felt for his brother had simply muted, not disappeared, no matter that Sam would never merit a place by his side. So he stood to the back of the crowd and offered a small wave of support to Dean, once he was sure John wouldn't see. And then he went home.

He had work to do before they returned. The barn needed mucking, the henhouse a good scrubbing, the last it would get before spring. The work in the garden was Sam's favorite, though, and there was plenty of it.

There were small, papery cloves of garlic to press deep into the earth where they'd hide until the April sun drew them up into a tentative, hopeful green. There were mounds of old hay to spread on rows of carrots and beets, that thin layer just enough to keep them sweet and accessible in frozen ground. And then there were clumps of catnip and mint, echinacea and chicory root and rhodiola, the plump hips of the roses that curled around their cabin, strips of bark from the white willows down by the stream.

Winter was hard in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but Sam had learned, was learning, how to survive.

Sam had just finished gathering the chunks of hickory and cherry they'd need to smoke the meat when daylight petered out on the horizon. There was no need for a fire, not yet; the night air might be cold in the mountains, but his layers of scratchy wool blankets were warm, and he settled beneath them without bothering about his clothes.

It was sometime later, sometime deep in the still presence of night, that he heard shouting. He fumbled with his blankets, managed to find his footing just as the door crashed open and two men spilled into the room. It was too dark to see clearly, but Sam knew the shape of those figures outlined in the moonlight. Would recognize them anywhere.

"Dean! Dad! What happened?"

John grunted and heaved Dean onto the empty bed. "Took a bullet to the leg. Missed the bone." He eyed his younger son. "Think you can manage this? I'm needed back at the hunt."

It rose again, that familiar smolder of anger-turning-hatred, sharpened now by his sudden jolt to wakefulness. Years of John's distance, his blindness to Dean's devotion. The wounded acceptance in Dean's eyes when John dismissed him. And Dean's stupid, beautiful, uncrushable hope that if he could just do enough, give enough, then one day John might love him.

Sam clenched his fists, felt the blood and adrenaline crawling under his skin. Only John could make him feel this way, the father he hated and needed and feared in irritatingly equal parts. He knew nothing of fighting, had never spent much time tussling with the other boys behind the schoolhouse, but he knew what he wanted to do. Knew that he couldn't.

"Yes, sir," Sam said instead. "I can manage."

John nodded once and escaped through the slatted door, leaving his sons alone.

Sam pushed away his futile resentment and turned his attention to his brother. Dean's face was pale, his eyes closed, and a clot of blood and torn leather crusted on his thigh. He lifted Dean's hips with practiced tenderness and slid his pants off his legs, dropping them in a forgotten heap on the floor. Sam prodded at the wound with his finger. The damage wasn't extensive; John had been correct in his assessment, thank God. The last thing they needed at the close of the year was a shattered bone.

He lit the kindling in their old cook stove, set some water on to boil. Dropped in the needle and tweezers he'd need later and checked to see if Dean was awake. He wasn't.

Sam walked outside toward the patches of plantain and yarrow that grew wild by the barn. They'd best be used fresh, and his anger lifted a little with gratitude that there hadn't yet been a hard frost. The drooping white blossoms were easy enough to spot by moonlight.

"Perhaps you'll believe me now."

The crushed yarrow was pungent in his fist. Sam breathed it in—_anchor yourself_—and shifted his weight to reach for the plantain. A one-off book dream, or something like it at least, come back to pester him while Dean bled out on their bed. Not something he needed at the moment.

"Oh, come now. I'm not the one who shot your brother. There's no need for pettiness."

Sam selected a handful of the tenderest leaves and pressed them into his palm. "What do you want from me?" It couldn't hurt to ask.

"Just your attention. A little time, a little trust."

Sam nearly laughed. Would have, had he not been in such a hurry. Dean bloody and pining for approval, John absent as always, and Sam so broken he was chatting with his hallucination. Which just so happened to be a talking fox.

What a picture they made.

The fox's voice turned sharp with irritation. "Something is coming, young Samuel. You'd do well to be cautious."

Sam ignored it, kept working. Couldn't waste time on delusions. And anyway, it was gone once he'd finished gathering the herbs. He headed back into the single room of their house, forcing his mind to the task at hand.

The water was boiling, steam heady around the stove. He grabbed the pot of thick honey from its perch and poured a generous whorl into an earthenware bowl, crushing in the leaves with the blunt end of a pestle. The honey turned acrid as he worked, bright with swirls of fresh green juice that loosened it into a thin paste for warding off infection.

Poultice in hand, Sam fished his tools from the boiling water and rushed to his brother. "Hey, Dean," he said, his fingers pressed lightly to Dean's sweaty forehead. "I'm here. I'm gonna fix you up now, ok? Might hurt some."

Sam kept one hand on Dean's thigh as the tweezers gripped the bullet. He tugged it out carefully and removed as many bits of thread and dirt as he could. A thorough wash with soap and hot water took care of the rest. When his needle poised on his brother's skin, his grip on Dean's leg tightened in sympathetic warning. "Here goes."

It was over quickly, the tugging of thread to close the open wound, and Sam bit the string and tied it off with expert care. Dean had groaned and shifted a little on the bed, but he'd kept himself mostly still, and the stitches were neat and even. Sam spread a thick layer of ointment over his handiwork and covered it all in a loosely wrapped bandage. "Ok, Dean. It's done."

Dean heaved a sigh and muttered something nonsensical, elk and fir trees and maybe something about a cave. Sam checked for fever, then cleaned his tools and put them away. He'd mend Dean's pants in the morning.

When he finally climbed into bed, dawn had already begun its slow ascent. He wrapped his arms gently around his brother, cherished the brief moment of injury-induced closeness. Dean stirred and pressed himself tighter into Sam's chest, and Sam breathed deep the scents of leather and gun oil and the trees outside, the constant smell of Dean and home.

Sleep, when it found him, was dreamless.

* * *

The hunters returned late the next day, somber and a little wary, less laden than the village had hoped. There was no stag.

Uneasy whispers rose among the townspeople who'd gathered to celebrate the hunt. The Elders offered no answers, just clustered briefly together in conference before heading to the big meeting house on the commons. The villagers began to drift away, still gossiping, and Sam hooked his arm under his brother's shoulders and started for home. Dean kept his back straight and his head high, broadcasting his independence to anyone who looked. As if he were supporting Sam, somehow. Sam smiled, wriggled against him. He was glad for the contact. Dean could pretend if he wanted.

_Sam and Dean, Dean and Sam._

It had been awhile since they'd been like this, the two of them. The realization hit Sam with a stab of wistfulness, of longing for the time before these walls between them, before Dean had closed himself off with whatever it was that haunted him now, before Sam had recognized his own difference and wrongness. Back in that simpler time when it had been Sam and Dean alone and together in the bright dream of childhood.

Dean kept quiet all day, too quiet, refused to discuss either the accident or the reason for the sudden meeting. Sam had long ago lost the ability to pierce his brother's stubborn armor, so he simply brewed him some tea—goldenseal to speed his recovery with a bit of ginger for sweetness—and settled down with a book.

Like it or not, he had to study.

This time, it was a history of the Great Civil War of 1971, written by Elder Bremen himself, memories of the man's experience blending with the facts and figures. The seventies had always fascinated Sam, intrigued him with thoughts of what life had been like before the terrible rending of their once-faithful nation. Brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, and all in the name of what the government had perversely termed "religious diversity."

He read for awhile, absorbing the stories of armed militia, imprisoned pastors, ransacked churches and homes. It started with the schools, his teachers always said, and Sam's reading confirmed it: there had been forced re-education and banned books years before the violence started.

Sam closed his eyes to see it. The thrum of marching boots on pavement, low and threatening, crowds parting like the Red Sea to a different sort of Moses. A crash of broken glass in the night, police at the door, searching, seizing, mindless of nightgowns and skittering children. A man lay facedown on the street, his head split like a ripe melon and oozing something thick and foul and Sam tried to turn away, tried to escape, but the fox met his gaze and said, "It's starting, Sam," and he opened his eyes, and Dean was shaking him.

"Sam, Sammy. Wake up."

The wall behind his brother was a wash of gunsmoke and spattered blood, but when Sam blinked his eyes, it flickered back to the familiar stack of hewn logs.

"Dad stopped by. We're wanted at the meeting house."

Sam blinked again. There had only been one other general assembly in his lifetime, at least that he could remember. He'd been five or six, too young to understand the heated discussion around him or the older women's tears when it was over, and he'd never thought to ask Dean about it later. The memory brought a pang of something to his gut: nerves, maybe, or dread. The same uneasy, jittery feeling he got when Elder Bremen's eyes met his during the man's pointed lectures in the schoolhouse.

When they reached the commons, nearly everyone was already there. Ella Matthews stood outside, tending the noisy cluster of small children and twirling her braid around her hand. When she saw Dean, the boredom on her face lightened with obvious interest, but he ignored her, gripping Sam's shoulder for support as he limped inside.

Sam didn't mind. Dean was nineteen. He had only a year or two left before he'd be married off to a suitable girl like Ella, leaving Sam alone with their father. If Dean wanted to delay the inevitable, Sam wouldn't complain.

The meeting house was abuzz with agitated murmur, terse words hushed under the heavy weight of fear. When they found their father, he didn't pause his conversation to acknowledge them, and Sam caught snatches of their whispers, his father's rumbling reassurance to the other man's muttered "risky."

They settled into the wooden pew, jostled their knees together. Whatever was coming, at least Sam still had Dean.

Elder Matthews, Ella's father and pillar of the community, rose from his seat. He stomped up to the platform, his knees creaking like ancient trees, and the murmuring quieted. "Brothers and Sisters, let us pray."

His voice rose and fell with practiced emotion as he prayed, thanking God for His blessings, beseeching His forgiveness and continued protection. Sam mostly ignored him; it wasn't anything he hadn't heard before. But the midweek assembly, that was new, and his skin crawled with uneasy curiosity.

Elder Matthews paused, took his time examining the congregation. Building suspense, Sam figured. The man loved his theater. But when he finally spoke again, his words came quick and steady, echoing through the room too fast for Sam to process. "After much deliberation," he said without flourish, "the time for formal announcement has come. We have spoken and been heard, and the vote has been cast. We are opening our arms to welcome a new member into our fold. Christelle Lafitte, please come forward."

Gasps of shock peppered the room, surprise evident on the faces of all but the Elders who'd made the decision. No one new had ever joined the community, not since the Winchesters' arrival fourteen years earlier.

The heavy oak doors swung open, and a woman stepped into the room. The thin fabric of her dress hung loosely over her figure, and the hair that framed the hungry angles of her face was wild with grease and twigs. A boy followed behind, about Dean's age, with a lazy set to his eyes that didn't quite mask the glint of wary determination beneath.

It was all very dramatic.

Sam wondered just where the Elders had hidden the pair, how long it had taken them to plan the meeting to best effect. He felt a weak pulse of guilt at the disrespect but ignored it. It was too fun to imagine them plotting over something so petty, too thrilling finally to have a joke to whisper to Dean. But when he turned to his brother, Dean looked away, a guilty red flush creeping up his cheeks.

Dean wasn't surprised. Dean knew what was happening. Dean hadn't said.

Elder Matthews' voice jerked Sam back. "By will of the majority," he continued, "We have decided to embrace Christelle Lafitte and her son Benjamin as full members in our community. The opposition has been heard; now is the time for celebration." He dismissed the crowd, reminding them of their obligation to return on Sunday, and stepped down to hesitant applause and a few halfhearted amens. Christelle looked fragile under all that attention, insubstantial. Sam sympathized; he knew how it felt, the oppressive weight of that scrutiny, all those eyes, peering, judging.

Sam shivered and looked for his brother, but Dean was leaving, slipping out the back without waiting for Sam. Sam chased after him, kept a few feet behind until they were alone. "Dean," he said, grabbing him by the shoulder.

Dean shrugged him off. "I'm fine, Sam. Good to limp all by my lonesome, see?" He gestured down at his injured leg, flashing his signature grin.

Sam sighed. "No, you're not. But that's not what I mean. The meeting, Dean. You knew. You knew they were coming. Why didn't you say?"

Dean chewed his lip and stared off to the side. "Dunno, Sammy. Didn't want you to get your hopes up if it turned out to be nothing."

"Get my hopes up for what?" He frowned, confused.

Dean squared his shoulders and kept walking. "I dunno, Sam," he repeated. "Just drop it, ok? We got chores to do."

Sam let him go. He should have known better than to think a stray bullet would solve any of their problems. Dean would tell him what he needed to know, nothing more to it than that.

When they crawled into bed that evening, Sam stared at the log beams above him, Christelle's skittish face imprinted on his eyelids. He pondered the fox's words and the day's events until he drifted into fitful sleep long after midnight.

* * *

The night that followed the strange meeting was cold and left behind it trails of frost and gritty snow that crunched beneath Sam's boots as he walked to school. The fox hovered at the edges of his vision, snapping twigs and bouncing in the fresh snow. Sam ignored it, figuring it would speak if it wanted to. It didn't.

The schoolhouse was hushed and buzzing much like the meeting had been the day before, though Benny wasn't there. Sam took his seat in one of the hard-backed chairs and did his best to shut out his classmates' gossip. It wasn't long before stern Naomi Bremen rose to start the day with prayer.

Sam closed his eyes and swallowed the resigned sigh that threatened to escape. He liked prayer well enough, or the idea of it at least, cherished the swell of peace that clung to his own silent prayers when he walked the length of the fences at night. But the God that echoed back in the stillness outside was something else, something different from the harsh power and heavy fist Naomi now addressed.

The thought filled him with familiar guilt, and he pushed it away, uneasy.

The day dragged on. Sam had once enjoyed school, had reveled in the strange lands brought to life when he read. As he'd gotten older, though, it had become clear that he was alone in that devotion. Books were his private escape; his fellow students couldn't follow him to the worlds he visited. And so Sam hid his love, and it faded in the hiding, eclipsed by the fear that had shattered his youth: fear of himself, of the Other. Fear of discovering they might be the same thing.

Benny was hauling water with Dean when Sam returned home, and John was nowhere to be found. They quieted at Sam's arrival, but he could tell from Dean's shuttered expression they'd been discussing something important. He didn't ask.

As he went about his chores, he found himself rehearsing the events of the day, trying to put his finger on just what had made it so strange. Naomi Bremen had been rigid as usual, unrelentingly doling out punishment on whisperers and gigglers. Her ruler hadn't found Sam, though; it hadn't since he was twelve and had scared off the last of his friends with his fantasies. He hadn't had anyone to talk to in class after that.

She'd lectured on that second Civil War, her long-nailed finger underlining the passages she quoted from her husband's book. That was all well and good, but then she'd wandered a little off topic, and her usual sharp manner was replaced with a glittering fanaticism Sam hadn't noticed before. "Lies and stories," she'd said, closing the textbook. "That's what the devil will tempt you with. Those things which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, that's what the good Lord says we're to think on."

She'd looked around the room as if daring them to contradict her. "Children, you know what we're hiding from. You know what's out there." They did: a world torn to pieces by greed and war, children starving, addicts bleeding out in streets. Young women and men prostituting themselves to the ruthless and powerful, desperate for the next hit, the next meal. None of them were foolish enough to want that.

"So if any of you find yourselves tempted, if anyone tries to lead you astray with falsehood and wild imagination, you tell your parents or Elders straightaway. Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction."

Sam hadn't heard much of the rest of the lecture. His mind had caught the word "imagination" and refused to move past it, and he thought about it again while he rushed through the milking. "Overactive imagination," that's what the Elders had said he suffered from when a concerned John had brought him in for examination three years ago. That and "beguiling spirits," whatever they were. The memory stirred a phantom ache in his back from the belt John had used to correct him, the long months of deprivation and scheduled discipline prescribed by the Elders that had continued until Sam could convince them he'd been cured.

Sam shivered and wondered why Naomi had chosen that topic for today. Everyone knew how the Devil worked, how he tricked and tempted you along the path to Hell. Everyone knew to be scared.

_Your name is Sam Winchester. _And then, quieter, a knee-jerk list of synonyms: _twisted, abomination, wrong_.

Dean stuck his head through the open door of the barn, and the sudden movement caused Rosie to kick. Sam jumped to duck her hoof and upended his pail in the process. The milk pooled around his feet, warm and sweet over the ripe scent of the barn. He glared at his brother, unsteady with the near miss and his jolting return to reality. Dean just laughed. "Nervous, Sammy?"

"Excuse me for not wanting to be kicked in the head by a cow," he muttered, shaking off both the fog and his boots.

"Sorry, princess," Dean said, still smiling and not looking sorry in the least.

Sam eyed the mess on the floor and sighed. "Dad's gonna kill me."

"No, he's not. He'll be at Christelle's until late. He won't even notice."

Sam looked up, surprised. "What's he doing with her? Wait. What do you mean, at Christelle's? They have a house?"

Dean cuffed his ear. "That's Mrs. Lafitte to you, squirt. Don't let Dad catch you being mouthy." He pulled up a stool and sat next to Sam. "They got set up in that old cabin by the stream, not too far from here. Think Dad's sweet on her."

Sam wrinkled his nose. "Gross, Dean."

Dean laughed, and just like that, they were friends again. Well, friendly, at least. And if it was strange that Benny banged through the door of the cabin to join their hasty dinner, Sam didn't comment. Better not to ask questions. Dean smiling and laughing and joking with him, that was enough.

That night, Sam dreamed of a river and muddy footprints, of dark eyes peering through tall, stately firs. That was it, a single image glimpsed in agonizing detail, but when he startled awake he was drenched in sweat and trembling.

* * *

John and Christelle were married in May. Small flowers poked through the grass, crocus and snowdrop and winter jasmine, and the breeze that shook the towering pines was tinged with warmth.

Despite the beauty of the day, the ceremony was subdued. The harshness of the preceding winter showed in gaunt figures and sagging clothes, in cracked and ridged fingernails and dark, hollow eyes. The budding trees did little to boost their diminished food stores, and that knowledge hung heavily on everyone.

The simplicity fit the courtship, Sam mused as he watched them take their vows. It had been a straightforward affair, driven by a shared sense of need more than any kind of love. The first time he'd really believed Dean's comment about their father's intentions, a particularly nasty storm had blown off a chunk of the Lafittes' rickety roof. Christelle had sent Benny for help, and John had rushed over, returning with the woman shortly after. He'd bundled her up by the fire and brewed her some chamomile tea himself instead of ordering Sam to do it, which was in itself eyebrow-raising. When he'd sat down next to her, and slowly, tentatively reached for her hand, well, that was when Sam knew.

They'd spent a few weeks at the Winchesters' cabin, John and Christelle in separate beds, their sons bundled up on the floor. Sam had grown accustomed to her quiet presence, her lowered voice. And it had been nice to have someone else help with cooking and cleaning and all of the work John had long since delegated to Sam. There was something about her, though, something wilting under John's bouts of anger, that made Sam anxious around her. Too much twitchiness reflected back at him. And then there was Benny, who worked hard and glowered harder, left little stamps of determined outrage all around the room. When their roof had finally been repaired enough for them to return home, Sam hadn't been sad. Five tempers in one snowbound cabin was too many to navigate.

The winter had been hard for more reasons than the relentless snow and his father's uncomfortable romance. Dean had all but disappeared once his leg had healed, and all he'd say whenever Sam asked was that he'd been with Benny. Even the fox was gone, silent since his last ill-fated warning.

_Just hold on, Sammy. You gotta hold on._

The words of his books lay flat and lifeless these days. Sam should have been glad of it, he knew, but the absence of his habitual escape only added to the dark cloud blanketing his mind. He'd stopped speaking much and barely ate, unable to find an anchor strong enough to pull him from the dreams that encroached now on his waking moments.

_Just hold on._

So he sat with Dean and Benny, observing their parents' wedding in silence. Dean was eyeing him with a strange intensity, and Benny looked thin-lipped and determined. Sam ignored them both and stared straight ahead, his fingers toying absently with the hollows between his ribs.

Dean nudged him with his elbow. "You ok, Sammy?" he whispered.

Sam looked at him, confused. Why did Dean care?

"Because you're my brother, dumbass."

Oh. He'd spoken aloud.

That was the other thing. When had Dean started swearing? His brother had always been one to follow rules, and the rules directing their language were clear: God did not smile on profanity.

Suddenly, Sam remembered Naomi's words from last fall, her dire warning against idle stories, and his curiosity flared for the first time in months. Dean had been spending an awful lot of time with Benny, and Benny came from Outside. Was that what had prompted Naomi's lecture? Was Benny filling Dean's ears with lies and temptation?

_Dreams and imagination. You know they're not real._

Sam examined his brother carefully for any sign that Dean had changed. There wasn't much, just an unfamiliar looseness around Dean's eyes, a certain set to his shoulders. And his newfound love of questionable language, of course.

Dean noticed the scrutiny and cocked an eyebrow. Sam looked away.

After the Elder's droning sermon about God's plan and marital blessings, there was a dinner, a sparse feast to which everyone contributed. Ella Matthews had even baked a cherry pie, yet another in her long line of attempts to catch Dean's eye. Sam's lips quirked in a ghost of a smile when he saw it. If Dean hadn't noticed her yet, he probably never would.

As their friends and neighbors settled down to eat, Sam recalled the stories he'd heard of that first Thanksgiving. He wondered what they had eaten, whether they'd settled down to a meager table like this one or had celebrated with stuffed bellies and sticky fingers. Probably the former, he figured; no one was dumb enough to waste food before winter. He squinted a little, allowing the shapes around him to morph into taciturn Pilgrims at a similar table. It wasn't much of a stretch.

John and Christelle left soon after eating, whether in haste to consummate their marriage or to escape the somber, prying eyes, Sam couldn't tell. Both, maybe. Since the Lafittes no longer had use for their cabin, the new couple would be staying the week there. Benny had already moved in with the Winchesters.

The walk back to their cabin was slow, and Sam settled into the silence without noticing. If Dean and Benny hung back a little, that was nothing unusual, and Sam was deep in thought anyway, torn between basking in the breeze's subtle warmth and brooding over the new member of his family. He wondered whether he'd be expected to call her Mother.

When Sam put his hand to the doorknob, ready to enter the cabin, to lose himself yet again in the dulling rhythms of survival, Dean spoke. "Sam."

Sam paused, a twinge of concern wriggling through his numbness at the urgency in Dean's tone. "What?"

"Shit," Dean said, clearly flustered, and Sam turned to him, bewildered. Dean raised his hands as if to argue but then dropped them, saying only, "I have something to tell you, and I need you to listen, but—shit," he said again. "Let's just go inside to talk."

When Sam opened the door, there were bags packed and lined against the wall. The worry that had been brewing beneath his consciousness spiked, and he looked to Dean, eyes wide and hurt, hoping it didn't mean what he thought.

"Just," Dean said, running a hand through his hair. "Just sit. And listen. Before you freak out."

They sat at the low kitchen table, him and Dean, with Benny hovering awkwardly in the doorway. Dean took a deep breath, planted his elbows firmly on the table, and said the words Sam had been dreading to hear. "We gotta go."

The blood rushed from Sam's face and something crashed in his ears, a sound like he imagined the ocean might make when a storm raged distant from shore. _Anchor yourself, anchor yourself, _but his anchor was gone, the ground dropped away, nothing left to grasp. The light hurt his eyelids, streaks of red-gold bursting and receding, trailing away in the blackness. Someone's arm on his hand, a voice in his ear. "Dammit, Sam. That's not what I meant. I mean _we_ gotta go, all of us, me and Benny and you."

The earth quivered beneath Sam's feet, cementing and dissolving back to vapor, and the waves in his head kept right on crashing. Too much noise; he could barely discern Dean's voice through it. Dean shook him a little, desperate, said, "Listen to me, Sammy. I need to get you out of here. They're killing you; you can't think I haven't seen that."

Sam looked at him then, dazed, and Dean must have taken it for accusation, because he swallowed hard and glanced away. "God, Sammy, I'm sorry it took me so long. I've been wanting to get you out of here since Dad went nuts trying to beat your brains out. I just wasn't sure—I mean, what if they were telling the truth, and the world really was all shot to hell? And you were just a kid, I couldn't bring you into that. But then Benny came, and he told me these memories I have, they're real, Sammy, and I knew we had to go. As soon as possible. I've been packed and ready for months, but this is the first time we've been alone. We gotta take this chance, Sam. I don't know when we'll get another."

If that was an explanation, it was the worst Sam had ever heard. Dean had memories? Of what? And since when had Dean cared about anything Dad did, and besides, Dad had been right about Sam, he knew that now, and so what if his methods had hurt and not worked because that was Sam's fault, anyway, and—

"Stop it, Sam. Listen to me. Dad's not right. This place, the whole idea of this place—it's wrong. It's a lie, everything they've ever told us has been a lie. I know you're confused and this is—unexpected, but Sam. I need you to trust me. Look at me."

_Anchor yourself to the basics. Your name is Sam. Your brother is Dean._

Sam met his brother's eyes and trembled at the depth of love and compassion and guilt reflected there, the understanding and friendship he'd thought he'd lost long ago. And he realized, fiercely, that no matter the cost, the loss, the suspension of disbelief required, he could only ever trust Dean.

_Dean and Sam, Sam and Dean. The two of us against the world._

Sam opened his mouth, his breath clouding out in the cabin's cold air. "Ok," he whispered, and all the tension flooded out of his brother. Dean stood and gave him a quick nod that promised more explanation later, and handed him a pack.

"C'mon, then," he said, gesturing toward the door. "Let's go."


	2. Chapter 2

_Quick, said the bird, find them, find them_

A few days after Dean met Benny, he ran into him again in the woods between their cabins. Benny was kneeling by the river, filling buckets of water and whistling a tune Dean didn't recognize. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows despite the autumn chill, his exposed forearms goose-fleshed and dirty.

"Hey," Dean said.

Benny turned and looked him over. "Hi there." He held Dean's gaze for a second, then angled away and dipped his bare hands in the stream, little pillows of water rushing through his fingers.

"So you guys decided to stick around."

Benny hummed something noncommittal in response, kept staring at the river. The water splashed up his arms, dampening his shirt and running down his skin in thin, muddy trails. His knees had to be soaked, kneeling in the mud like that.

"Can't say I blame you," Dean said. He didn't know why he was pushing; Benny clearly didn't want to talk.

Benny turned again and squinted at him. "Now what do you mean by that?"

Dean blinked, took a step back. "Nothing, just," he said, gesturing helplessly. "The world, you know. Safer here." He nodded. That was right.

Benny snorted. "Safe from what?"

Dean just stared, his mouth gaping, wordless. Benny huffed and snatched up his buckets. "Look," he said, shooting Dean a pointed glare. "I agreed to the rules 'cause I gotta stick around, look after my momma. Don't need to join the make-believe, too." He stalked back toward his cabin.

Dean watched him go. Benny's shoulders were stiff, tendons jutting from his neck. A clear rejection if he'd ever seen one. But there'd been something in Benny's eyes in that meeting house, a familiar loneliness Dean recognized clear as day. "Benny," Dean called, rushing after him. "Wait."

Benny ducked a branch and kept walking, but he answered. That was something, at least. "What do you want, Dean?"

"Just," Dean said, and froze. He didn't know what he wanted, that was the problem. Answers, reassurance. Someone to talk to. God, it had been so long since he could talk to Sam. But Benny had stopped at the door and abandoned the buckets, was looking at Dean with crossed, defensive arms.

"What's it like?" Dean blurted. "Out there." He hated how small his voice sounded, how young, and clamped his jaw tight to compensate. But Benny seemed to soften at the words.

"You really don't know?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

Dean shook his head.

"Jesus," Benny mumbled. "Come inside then. We'll talk."

They did. It was the first of many such conversations, Dean's floundering questions and Benny's patient answers. The sketched-out beginnings of a new understanding of the world and his place in it. His first true picture of home.

* * *

The moon above hung fat and yellow, and the thick mud on the riverbank sucked at Dean's boots with every step. They'd been walking for hours, eager, all of them, to put as much distance between themselves and their home _not home_ as possible. He hadn't had a chance to talk to Sam yet, but he'd been watching. Sam's steps were slowing, his shoulders drooping lower. Dean figured it was about time to camp for the night.

The forest beside the river gave way up ahead to a little clearing edged with firs, an open space distant enough from the mud for them to spread out and keep dry. It seemed as good a place as any to get some rest. "Look decent enough to you?" Dean asked, nudging Benny with his knee.

Benny grinned at him. "Sure does, brother," he drawled. Dean grinned back, but when he glanced at Sam for confirmation his brother was staring at the ground and scowling.

Dean rubbed at the back of his neck. He knew Sam envied his friendship with Benny, or maybe "envy" was the wrong word: it wasn't as though Sam believed he'd been cheated. Dean shook his head as he made his way to the clearing, wondering where exactly he'd gone wrong, how he could have better shielded his brother. He saw Sam's face, twelve years old and terrified, small _so small_ before John's towering fury. Sam's recently discovered journal lay open and forgotten on the table beside them, his dreams and visions exposed to John's wrath in the scrawled writing of a child.

"_What is this, Sam?" Dean knew his father's anger intimately, had felt its intensity marking his skin, but he'd never heard him speak like this. John's voice was quiet, controlled, flicking at the edges of the room like a snake's tongue, but Dean could see beneath the veneer, and what he saw petrified him._

"_I_—" _Sam stuttered, his hands fluttering before him as if they held some explanation his tongue couldn't shape. "I don't know, sir, just_—_it's just things I see, sometimes."_

"_Things you see." Now John's voice came flat and solid, heavy like the sole of his workboot, and Dean could see Sam wilting under its weight._

"_Yes, sir," Sam whispered. "Like when I'm reading, or sleeping, I see things, sometimes. Just dreams and_—_and imagination, I know, but_—"

"_Dreams and imagination." The cat-and-mouse game of John's repetition stretched Dean's nerves to a taut-wire thinness, and he couldn't imagine how Sam could just stand there and bear it._

_But Sam was sturdy, for all he was small, and he ducked his head and bit his lip and said, "Yes, sir. I know they're not real."_

"_Do you." And now John's voice was a schoolyard bully, mocking and taunting from the safe heights of imagined superiority and greater size, and Sam could see it, could tell he'd not be given a chance to explain, and he hung his head in silence._

Dean shook himself to clear his thoughts and noticed, suddenly, a thinly muttered, "No no no, can't, no," coming from behind him, and when he turned to look, there Sam was, his eyes big and wild in the moonlight, his head twisting side to side, hands held palms-out in denial.

He was at Sam's side in a heartbeat. "Sammy? What's the matter?"

Sam looked at him, through him, scanned the treeline and said, "Can't stay here. Can't, Dean. Please."

Sam may have gotten cryptic and quiet the last few years, but he hadn't gone off the deep end, no matter what John thought. Dean looked him straight in the eye and asked, "Why, Sam? What's going on?"

And then Sam was snatching at his arms, digging little half moons into the backs of Dean's hands with his bitten-off fingernails. "I saw it, Dean. I know you don't—" Sam shook his head. "But I saw it. And we can't stay here. Just—please. We can't."

"Yeah, ok," Dean soothed. "We won't stay here. Further up in the woods ok?"

Sam nodded in frantic relief, but when Dean turned to keep walking those fingernails scrabbled again at his back. "Dean," Sam hissed, his breath swarming around Dean's head like smoke in the cold night air. "Tracks."

Ah. So Sam was worried about being found.

Dean noticed Benny then, watching them, his blue eyes dark and inscrutable in the moonlight. "You all go on ahead," Benny said with a nod. "Find us a spot to camp. I'll walk up a ways, make some tracks leadin' across the river and up through the woods on the other side. Swing back around and meet y'all later."

Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Benny laughed and ruffled his hair. "Pretty good with scramblin' a trail, Sam. Don't you worry none."

They watched Benny's retreating back in silence, caught together in the spell of chirping crickets and rushing river water, the familiar sounds of the forest at night just barely enough to hold back the wall of uncertainty that threatened to overwhelm them, here, in the dark, alone.

"C'mon, Sammy," Dean said, uneasy, and began the trek up through the trees. Sam's footsteps came muffled behind him seconds later, following as he always did with that completeness of trust that shook Dean to the core, unquestioned as it was despite everything.

Camp only took them a few minutes to set up. Despite his reluctance to hunt, Sam was a decent woodsman, and he moved quickly and efficiently, unrolling bedding, finding a spot a good distance away to hang their food in a tree. Dean didn't even consider a fire; it was early May, and cold, but they'd dealt with worse—_Dad gone hunting and Sam, thin and blue-lipped, huddling against Dean under mountains of blankets_—and the smoke would only be a beacon to their location, anyway.

He took first watch, told Sam to sleep, and settled up against a tree trunk to wait for Benny. Stars winked above through the sparse covering of new spring leaves, and he counted them absently, content with the rough bark at his back, the seeping cold of the earth beneath him. This was freedom—the outdoors, away from John, from everything. Just him and Sam, and Benny.

Dean recalled the moment he'd first met Benny and grinned, rueful. It had been on that stupid hunt, the one Sam had obviously not wanted him anywhere near. In true Winchester fashion, though, Sam hadn't said anything, just skulked around and stared at Dean with those big, soulful eyes of his when he thought Dean wasn't looking. And Dean had ignored his brother's unspoken fears and blundered straight ahead into getting himself shot.

He chuckled with the memory. He'd wandered off a little from the rest of the group, determined to add to the town's stores on his own, thank you very much. A little jaunt into what he'd assumed was an abandoned den had uncovered two sets of eyes, bright and frightened and, shockingly, human.

Turned out they'd been running—from what, Benny never would say, though he hadn't looked like he quite agreed with his mother's reasoning on the matter. As they'd exchanged terse introductions, another hunter had heard the noise and shot straight into the den without checking first. And so Dean had earned himself a bullet to the leg, and the Lafittes had been discovered.

He'd been so proud of Sam afterward, with his neat stitches and cool head, nary an I-told-you-so uttered. Of course, Sam hadn't told him so, not in so many words at least, but Dean had known. He always knew with Sam.

Or he used to, anyway. Now there were long days and weeks where Sam kept his face so carefully blank that Dean couldn't see beyond it. His brain circled back to his earlier musing, puzzling yet again over what he could have done differently. Stepped in, maybe—_t__he sharp outline of John's palm on Sam's face_—told John off, perhaps—_the crack of that belt, over and over and over again, and Dean retching in the bushes outside_—but what would that have accomplished? Nothing, but the same for Dean and likely worse for Sam.

No, he couldn't have stopped John. Not without one of them killing the other. But there'd been a moment, maybe, or hundreds, where something he could have said, if only he'd had his head on straight, might have kept Sam from fading.

"I don't know, not always," Sam had whispered when Dean found him after one of John's sessions. "What's real, what isn't. Dean. I don't know."

And Dean had looked at him, at his baby brother all hunched up on the bed, his eyes dry and fevered with John's ministrations, those blind, fruitless efforts to repair something that never was broken. He'd longed to soothe him, to wrap Sam close in his arms and shelter him there, untouchable now that John was gone. But what was real, what wasn't—Dean hadn't known either, and he'd said the only thing that would come to mind. "You gotta anchor yourself to the basics, Sammy. Hold on to the facts and don't you let go."

An owl hooted somewhere nearby, and Sam, as if he had his own private access to Dean's head—_kid probably does_—sat up abruptly and stared at Dean, hard. It was too dark to read his expression, but his eyes glittered with the light from the stars—_fox eyes_, Dean thought, and wondered where that had come from. He stood and walked over, lowering himself stiffly to the bedroll by his brother's side. "Can't sleep, Sammy?"

Sam shook his head, and Dean pulled him close and eased them both down to the rolled-up blanket that served as Sam's pillow. "C'mere," he said, and began to stroke Sam's hair in the patterns that had been familiar since childhood.

He thought about Sam's words three years ago—_I lied, Dean. I told them I know it's not real, what I see, I mean. But I lied_—about his own shamefully inadequate answer that had allowed this self-doubt to grow and fester within his brother, and the words he wished he'd had at the beginning finally came.

"You know, Sammy," he said, "I remember some of it. Before. I can see Mom's face sometimes if I don't try too hard, you know, like looking at something out of the corner of your eye."

Sam huffed, a shadow of a laugh, surprising from his ever-solemn brother. But Dean was on a roll, and he refused to let Sam's weird sense of humor distract him. "I see other things, too," he said, and suddenly Sam was very still, and Dean heard the echo of Sam's voice in his words. "From before, I mean," he corrected. "I think I can remember the house we lived in, you and me and Mom and Dad. A little bit, at least. Just some of the colors—lots of blue, I think—and that it was real soft all over, the chairs, the floor. And it smelled like flowers. Don't know what kind."

Sam had begun to relax in Dean's arms, so he kept talking, all those pent-up words that poured through his mind, now that he could finally reach them. "Mom loved you so much, Sammy. A lot of it's foggy, like I'll get the smell or the feeling or something and not much else. But I remember, clear as day, the moment Mom brought you home from the hospital, how proud she was, the way she played with your little fingers and toes. You had the tiniest toes I'd ever seen. When you got older, she'd nibble on them just to make you squirm."

Dean shifted a little to reposition his arm, which had begun to lose feeling under the weight of Sam's head. "I always thought I was making them up. Those memories. I figured we'd never really had a mom, or, I don't know. That my brain was creating happy stuff I wished we had. But then I met Benny."

He leaned in close and caught a whiff of Sam, warm and safe and sweaty beside him. Always slept sweaty, Sam did, even as a kid. "Sammy, I know you don't like it when he calls me brother, but he doesn't mean anything by it. He's been real good to me. Patient. God, we spent hours, me asking and him answering, talking about the stuff I remembered, whether it was true. What the world out here was really like. We never would've gotten out without Benny. But Sam, you're my brother. Just you. Always will be."

Sam pressed his back tighter against Dean, and the words running through him began to fade, so he nestled his head into Sam's shoulder and hoped that would be enough. For a few minutes, it was, and the world around him narrowed to the steady thrum of Sam's heart, the gentle rise and fall of his breath.

"Dean?" Sam whispered.

Dean hummed in response, near enough to the brink of sleep that speech came slow.

"What happened to her?"

Reality slammed back into his awareness, shocking him awake. The uncertain bend in their future ahead, Sam's bare-knuckled grip on survival. The horrible, secret, ugly fact that Dean didn't know, his own mother gone and he didn't know how, and his chest ached with the answer he had to give. "I don't know, Sammy. Don't remember."

Sam was quiet awhile, thinking. "Dean?"

"What, Sammy?"

"What's a hospital?"

He laughed at the absurdity of it, that straightforward, childish question, no hint of blame in Sam's tone over Dean's forgetfulness, like Sam didn't even realize what a failure that was, Dean not knowing. _Damned kid and his questions_ was all Dean could think, but something in his heart loosened all the same. Sam's blanket forgiveness, his sweet curiosity. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed that inquisitiveness. "A big building, Sam, where people go when they're sick, or to have babies like Mom did."

"Like a doctor?"

"A whole bunch of doctors, all in one place."

They were quiet after that. Sleep crept through the edges of Dean's mind, soft and alluring. He held it back stubbornly, needing to keep watch, to keep Sam safe. A twig snapped nearby moments later, and he opened his eyes to the darkness of Benny's approaching shadow. "We good?" he asked, just to say something.

"We're good."

Dean untangled himself from his clinging brother and moved to join Benny at the other side of the clearing, where they could speak without disturbing Sam. "How's he holdin' up?" Benny asked, nodding toward the pile of blankets.

Dean took a moment to think before replying. The instinct to say everything's fine and call it a day was strong as ever, but it wouldn't work, not with Benny. "He'll be ok, I think," he answered. "Still pretty quiet, but we just talked more than we have in months. He asked me questions, Benny."

Benny grinned. "That's real good, Dean." They sat in silence a while, counting stars or whatever it was that Benny did when he didn't feel the need to talk. That was the thing about Benny: they never needed to speak, not unless they had something to say, and when they did Dean could just tell it like it was. No picking his brain for the correct answer, no fear that a momentary lapse in judgment or slip of the tongue would earn him trouble. Benny was simple.

He hadn't exaggerated to Sam: they never could have escaped without Benny. He'd believed Dean when no one else would, least of all himself, when the words pouring out of him could have landed him at the end of John's belt alongside Sammy. It was more than just confirmation; it was the slip-slide removal of his keystone of faith in their father. John was wrong, or lying. It didn't so much matter which. Dad had always known best, and now he didn't.

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he bolted awake what felt like seconds later, but there were lines of grey spring sunlight crossing his face, and Benny was snoring beside him with one leg propped up between Dean's calves.

Dean snorted to himself as he heaved Benny off, glad at least that their incompetence had not led to discovery. He brushed off the leaves and twigs that had caught in his clothing during the night and grabbed his canteen. He'd collect some water for drinking and washing up, and then they could head out. Proper meals could wait until they'd gained more distance.

When he reached the edge of the treeline, he froze. There, along the riverbank where they'd been the night before, was the unmistakable outline of his father's heavy boot.

* * *

Sam started awake when Dean grabbed his shoulder, but he quieted instantly at the look on Dean's face. Dean held a quick finger up to his lips and motioned for Sam to get up. "We gotta move, Sammy," was all he said, and then Sam was packing, swift and silent, while Dean woke Benny with a whisper and a hand over his mouth. Benny grumped and wrinkled his nose, and Dean would have laughed had he not been in such a hurry.

They didn't stop again until well after noon, when they stumbled onto a large patch of grass lit by warm sunlight. Benny wolfed down his portion of dried venison and stretched like a cat to digest in the sun. Sam ate more slowly, taking tiny bites which he chewed into mush before swallowing with a careful sip of water. He kept his eyes trained on the edge of the trees, flickering back and forth like he was watching someone pace. He didn't say anything.

A doe stuck her head through the trees and eyed them, her ears pricked up cautiously. She moved toward them, paused. They kept still, must have seemed harmless enough, because after a minute of staring she ignored them in favor of nibbling at the trout lilies that dotted the grass. A fawn followed after her, prancing and playful, careless of the human threat before it.

"Wish I had my gun," Dean joked to Sam.

Sam jerked and stared at him, glanced at the deer, back at Dean. He hunched in on himself and frowned, telltale mark of his uncertainty. "What?" he muttered.

"That doe," Dean said, nodding at the deer. "Love me some venison." He patted his stomach and grinned.

But Sam kept right on frowning, his gaze flitting from the deer to Dean to an empty space on the edge of the clearing, always landing back on Dean. Daring him to say something, almost, but Dean had no idea what.

He did have some questions, though, and figured now was as good a time as any to ask. "So, Sam," Dean said, testing the waters. Benny pushed himself up on his elbows to listen. He hadn't requested an explanation for their sudden departure that morning, but Dean knew he was curious.

Sam squinted at him in response, his forehead scrunched up like a newborn, and blinked like he had something stuck in his eye. Struggling to remember where he was, then. Dean bit back a sigh and did his best to keep his mounting concern hidden. "You gonna tell me what that was all about last night?"

Sam blinked again. "What?"

Dean took a deep breath to steel himself, to hold his voice steady. "Last night, Sam. You flipped out over our campsite. Why?"

Sam flinched, and Dean had the distinct impression his brother expected a blow. _Fucking John._ It felt good to swear, to label John with words that bit and snapped like John deserved. _That piece of shit excuse for a father_. He'd flirted with the forbidden words for years, pricked his ears up whenever the more rebellious kids bandied them about. But it wasn't until Benny had come along with his lilting drawl and sardonic grin, utterly unafraid of a few _shits _and _fucks_, that Dean had decided to embrace them. Thank God for Benny.

But Sam was speaking, and Dean forced his attention back to his brother. "I saw it, Dean," he said, biting his lip. "A few weeks ago, I dreamed it, the clearing, and it felt wrong somehow, dangerous. We couldn't stay there. I don't know why, Dean. I don't know. But something bad would have happened." Sam shot forward and snatched at Dean's arms. "You have to believe me, Dean," Sam said. "I'm not—I mean, I know it's bad, and I shouldn't listen, and I try not to, I swear I do. But they come true, the things I see. They happen. Sometimes, anyway. And we couldn't stay there." He shook his head, that long greasy hair flying every which way. Dean could tell he was about half a minute from checking out entirely.

"Sam. Sammy." He gripped his brother's hands, gave them a reassuring squeeze. "Listen, Sam. Listen. You did good, ok? You were right. I saw Dad's footprints when I went to get water this morning. That's why we left so quick."

He wouldn't have thought Sam's face could get any paler, but it did, and his jaw snapped shut. "Sam," Dean said, but Sam cut him off.

"No, Dean. He can't—I can't go back. I shouldn't have left, I know. I know, and I'm sorry. I should have just let you go. But I couldn't, and if I go back now, he'll kill me, Dean, he will. Please. Please—"

"Sammy." Louder this time. It worked, caught Sam's attention, and Sam met his eyes, fear warring with his instinct to trust. And if that didn't hurt like a mother.

But now wasn't the time to address Dean's issues, so he squeezed Sam's hands once more and released them to pat his neck. "Not sending you back, ok?" Sam shook his head, clearly still panicked, but Dean pressed on. "Never, Sam. I need you to trust me on this. Can you do that?" Sam stared back at him, his eyes wide and searching, scanning Dean's face for reassurance or hint of betrayal, Dean didn't know which. The minutes ticked by while Dean held his gaze, and finally Sam relaxed and gave him a tiny nod. Dean nodded back. "Good. Now we gotta talk about what's next."

Dean stretched his cramping muscles and settled down next to Sam on the grass. "Asheville's not too far, 'bout twenty miles as well as I can figure. We'll get a bus ticket out once we're there. Benny's got some cash."

Sam looked at him again, his face blank save for the tiny furrow between his eyebrows. It struck Dean then how painfully familiar this face was, the emptiness, the detachment, and he couldn't handle it. Not at the moment. Not until they were out of there, and safe.

He stood and shouldered his pack. "All right. Time to go." Sam obeyed without a sound, snatching his own bag out of the grass and straightening his long legs. Benny stood, too, and met Dean's eyes, his gaze heavy with concern and a clear determination to discuss this more later. _Whatever_, Dean thought, mildly irritated. They could talk about anything Benny liked once Sam was safely out of John's reach.

Benny had other ideas though, and his patience ran out as soon as they'd settled down for the night. When Dean returned to camp with fresh water, Sam was dozing fitfully, drool pooling around his half-open mouth, his legs twitching occasionally beneath his blankets. Not ten feet away, Benny had propped himself up against a fallen log with a quilt pulled over his knees for warmth. He gestured Dean over when he saw him.

"So," Benny said, his casual tone giving no indication of the worry Dean knew he was feeling. "Little Sammy dreams things that come true."

"Yeah, seems like." Fear stabbed hot when he uttered the words—flashes of John's hideous rage, ignited by a childish journal—but this was Benny, not John. Dean swallowed, licked his lips, settled himself down in the grass next to Benny. "He's always been, I don't know, intuitive, I guess. Smarter than the rest of us. But he's a good kid, Benny, I swear to God. Nothing bad about him. There isn't, he just—"

"Dean." And that was all it took, Benny's voice, his eyes, the warmth and acceptance Dean read there, and he heaved a sigh and began to massage his temples.

"I know, Benny. Sorry. You're not John. I just wish—" he paused, slipped his fingers down to work the tension from his neck. "I wish you could've met Sammy before John flipped his lid. He was such a sweet kid, and curious, like he just had to know everything there was to know. Never stopped asking questions. He's so quiet now."

Benny watched him, silent. Dean closed his eyes and wandered through the layered memories swarming to meet him: Sam as a baby, wet-faced and squalling; as a toddler, Dean's name his first word; a few years older, long-limbed and loud, running through the woods like a whitetailed deer. Always free, always curious. "I've known for a long time there was something different about the way he sees things—like he sees more than we do, somehow. But there's never been anything wrong about him."

He opened his eyes and met Benny's gaze, daring him to protest, but Benny only smiled. "I know that, Dean." He stood and clapped Dean on the shoulder. "Get some sleep, all right? I'll watch for awhile. Won't doze off this time, promise."

Dean snorted and started to rise, but Benny's grip on his shoulder tightened. "And quit your worrying, mother hen. Sam'll be fine, you'll see."

Sam was awake when Dean curled up behind him. Dean wondered how much he'd heard, but Sam stayed quiet as always. He settled in and tried to sleep, kept his eyes closed through the jostling when Sam turned to face him, hoped they wouldn't need to have this conversation, not now. Then something touched his face and his eyes flew open, but it was Sam's hand, his thin, calloused fingers stroking circles on Dean's skin. Warmth flooded his chest, unfamiliar and achingly welcome. _Sam_, he thought, and knew then that no matter their past or the hurdles ahead, Sam was still _Sam_, and he drifted off with the first swelling of hope he'd felt in years.

* * *

They reached Asheville late the next morning. When they'd passed far enough through the trees to get their first good look, Dean froze, awestruck. It was like nothing he'd ever seen. The last tendrils of morning fog drifted lazily through the valley and clung to the sides of the mountains around it, the familiar mountains that stretched as far south as Dean could see. Trees painted the open space with that fresh, young green of springtime, crowding every surface that wasn't already dotted with—

Buildings. So many buildings. Tall and red, or white, or tiled with a strange glass that reflected back the blue of the sky, but darker somehow. Buildings climbing higher than any human-made structure Dean knew, layers upon layers of windows opening up the secrets of their interiors. His heart thudded hard in his chest, and his feet itched to move closer, closer.

Sam released a loud breath beside him. He must have been holding it, caught in the same spell as Dean, and when Dean glanced at his brother, his eyes were wide with wonder. Benny stood off to the side looking strangely gentle, though a curl of amusement twitched at the corner of his mouth.

When they drew near enough to hear the roar of traffic—"_Yes, there are cars," Benny said patiently. "No, they weren't all burned in riots."_—Dean's excitement began to fade. He could see people now, straight-spined and bright-eyed, unworn by the preceding winter. He felt obvious, out of place in his faded leather jacket and the shabby flannel that stretched too tight across his chest. These people wore strange clothes, clean and fitted, and the skin of their hands looked soft and unused. He shoved his own hands into his pockets.

Benny, fortunately, looked confident enough for the three of them, picking his way through the winding streets like he knew where he was going. Dean followed him with half a mind, the rest of his attention caught in the passing signs and storefronts. Princess Anne Hotel. Illusions Day Spa. Something called Starbucks, announced as such by a sign bearing a peculiar, finned woman. The warm air drifting through the opened door smelled as near Heaven as Dean could imagine.

The ground beneath their feet was strange, all grey and hard like ice, but not slippery. Benny seemed unbothered, though, so Dean pretended to be as well. They were walking alongside a wide road now, a highway, Benny called it. Dean could see Sam's nerves fraying, and he sympathized. It was loud here, and dusty, and something thick and oily clung to the rushing air and burned in his nose. He wished they could go back to the nice-smelling Starbucks.

And there it was, in front of them. The sign read "Greyhound" and jutted up above the squat building like a scraggly tooth. "Here we are," Benny said, all matter-of-fact, as if this wasn't the single strangest day of their lives. "Bus station. You two comin' in with me to get tickets, or you gonna wait out here?"

Dean hesitated, but panic was edging through the mask on Sam's face, and he figured interacting with strangers could wait for another day. "We'll wait," he said, and Sam relaxed minutely.

Benny wasn't inside long, but enough time passed for Sam to have the first of what Dean imagined would be many minor breakdowns that day. It wasn't much, and probably no one else would've even noticed, but Dean did. The whites of Sam's eyes grew wider, and the tendons in his neck were taut with suppressed tremors. He was gnawing his lips to shreds. "Sam," Dean said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "It's gonna be fine. It's a lot, I know; heck, it's a lot for me, too. But Benny knows what he's doing, and we're gonna be just fine."

Sam did not melt into Dean's comfort as he'd hoped. Instead, he jutted his jaw and squared his shoulders, and when his eyes met Dean's they were hard and glinting. "And what's it gonna cost, huh? What are we going to have to do to make this work?"

Not exactly the reaction Dean had anticipated. "What do you mean, Sam?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "You know as well as I do what it takes to survive out here. All I want to know is what exactly you expect from me."

Understanding dawned with an agonizing slowness. Images rose before his eyes, the prostitutes and addicts and thin-boned factory workers they'd been told comprised this world, and Dean felt his heart break with the weight of Sam's trust, of what Sam had been willing to sacrifice simply because Dean asked it. He knew, somewhere dark and horrible inside him, that Sam would never have left on his own, no matter what he suffered at John's hands, because as much as Sam feared John, he feared the Outside more. And Dean had left him in the dark.

"Sam," he said, his voice firmer than it had any right to be. "It's not like that." He wanted to explain, but the words jumbled up inside him, all twisted and tangled and indistinguishable, and Benny was joining them, and the moment passed. "I'll explain on the bus, ok?"

But by the time they'd boarded the bus and settled into the sticky, cracked seats that would be their home for the next several hours, Sam's boldness had dissipated, replaced by the same barely contained hysteria Dean had seen earlier. He poked Sam in the side a few times, but Sam didn't so much as flinch. If anything, Dean was the one reacting to the touch, flush with sudden self-directed anger at the sharp gouges he found between his brother's ribs. He hadn't realized Sam had lost so much weight. Hadn't paid enough attention. _Stupid_.

Annoyed at the familiar pulse of guilt and helplessness beating inside him, Dean turned to Benny. Simple, uncomplicated, toothy Benny. Bright-eyed Benny who'd seen Dean at his worst and smiled like it was nothing a good night's sleep wouldn't fix, or maybe some of that whiskey he'd waxed poetic about whenever they were alone in the woods. That was what Sam didn't get: Dean only had one brother—only loved one brother—but Benny was a friend. The solid, supporting shoulder he'd never gotten from his father, the calming touch he could barely remember from his mother. The first friend Dean had known.

With a start, Dean realized he had no idea where they were going. _Stupid_, he thought. _Stupid and distracted_. "Hey Benny, where's this bus headed?" he asked, keeping the stupid part to himself. As if Benny wasn't fully aware already.

"New Orleans," Benny answered with a lazy grin. "Home."


	3. Chapter 3

_I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you_

Once, when Sam was young, all of ten or eleven, maybe, he spent the entire night out under the stars with Dean. John had gone hunting, or so he'd said, anyway—it wasn't until years later that Sam noticed how seldom he returned from those hunts with any success.

The stars were particularly bright that June evening, cutting through the blackness of open sky with startling clarity. They lay together on the dewy grass, arms locked behind their heads, while Sam recounted for Dean the ancient stories playing out across the sky above them. He traced the complicated pathway of Corona Borealis, which Dean pretended to follow, told his brother all about Daedalus and his famous Minotaur-infested maze. He skipped over Perseus—something about a snake-head with the power to petrify gave him chills—and besides, he didn't think Dean would be able to make it out. But even Dean could see Cygnus.

Gemini was his favorite. "Castor and Pollux," he said. "Twins. Brothers. One human, the other immortal." Sam lingered over the word _immortal_, the hum and the moan and the lovely specificity of it. "They're together now," he said. "Up in the sky, forever."

"Castle and who?" Dean asked.

"Castor and Pollux, Dean," Sam said, giggling.

"Whatever," Dean said.

Sam snorted, and Dean smacked his arm.

"Hey." Dean sat up abruptly. "How about we make it us? Dean and Sam, Sam and Dean. The two of us against the world." He practically yelled that last part, the sound of Dean's patented brashness dissolving into the trees surrounding them. There was no one around to hear.

Sam smiled at Dean's voice, at the darkness, the safe blanket of murmuring stars. "Sounds good, Dean," he said.

"Yeah, it does." Dean turned to face him and leaned back on an elbow. "How do you come up with this stuff anyway, Sammy?"

Sam tilted his head. "I don't know, Dean. Can't you see it?"

"See what?"

"The stories in the stars."

Dean didn't say anything after that, just pulled Sam close so his head was resting on Dean's chest. They drifted off like that, warm and alone and together.

Years later, Sam would find a hardcover volume in a cluttered corner of a bookshop, some forgotten space lost to the creeping dust of the deep South. The spine would crack when he opened it, mold spores flinging themselves to the back of his throat, and he'd read his star stories in cramped black print and wonder.

* * *

New Orleans was too much. The noise and color of its streets swirled in Sam's head like spirits dancing, and the peppery air made him cough. A man with skin like tree bark tried to sell him some fabric thing, bright and flimsy and useless as far as Sam could tell. Another man sat on the street corner, a gleaming metal contraption in his lap and a hat full of coins at his feet. Sam tried to look away, but this man's skin was dark, darker than any he'd ever seen, and smooth as a young girl's face. While he watched, the man lifted the metal thing to his lips, winked at Sam, and blew.

In a heartbeat, Sam was gone. His world fell away to make room for another, smoky and languid and bewitching. It wasn't the familiar drift of his book-dreams; this was real and solid beneath his feet, life bursting through cracks like juice from a split-skinned fruit. It drew him into its rhythms, sharp staccato bursts and a great, plunging fall that left him breathless, writhing. He danced with it, ached with it, threw himself into its lilting dissonance until unwelcome fingers snatched him back.

"Sammy?" Dean's voice, his hand on Sam's shoulder. His brother's face glimmered with the music's residue for a half-second before the sun burned it away. "You with us?"

"Yeah, sorry," Sam said, and shook his head to clear it. He shoved his hands in his pockets, grinding his knuckles against the coarse fabric. The man still sat on the corner, his eyes closed with the swell of his music. Sam envied him.

"That there's a saxophone, Sam," Benny said, smirking. "Welcome to New Orleans."

They kept walking. Sam struggled to follow, managing for awhile. He nearly tripped once, when a scraggly girl darted in front of him to peer through a storefront window. Then a passing woman blew smoke in his face, and he choked, had to stop a minute to find the air to keep going.

And then Dean was there, like always, his hand warm on the small of Sam's back and his voice low in his ear. "Sam? You ok?"

Sam coughed once more and nodded his head, blinking away the tears that had flooded his eyes. "Yeah," he choked out. "What was that?"

Benny laughed. "That, Sammy, was tobacco. Shame of the South." He grimaced. "Well, one of them anyway. But consider it another welcome to New Orleans."

They went on like that, Benny in front and Dean's hand at Sam's back, and it wasn't long before Benny disappeared through a low doorway and gestured for them to follow. It opened to a stairway, dark and narrow and smelling a bit like the outhouse in summer, if someone had left a dead chicken in it. Sam wrinkled his nose and climbed the steps, and another door led them into the house. An apartment, Benny called it.

Sam looked around, bemused. The floor was soft with something orange and shaggy, and the walls were painted a jarring yellow—like goldenrod, he thought, and the whole thing made him itch. He settled into a long, cushioned chair-thing and waited.

"Whose place is this?" he heard Dean asking.

"My grandaddy's, now mine," Benny answered. "Been empty awhile. We'll be fine here."

A thick layer of dust coated every surface, and it rose in heavy, roiling clouds when Sam shifted in his seat. He sneezed twice in quick succession, and Benny laughed. "Sorry, Sammy. We'll get this place cleaned up in no time, don't you worry."

_It's Sam,_ he thought irritably, but didn't voice it.

Benny and Dean went back to discussing something, logistics probably, and Sam tuned them out. They'd call him if they needed him. He traced a crack along the wall and up, up to the ceiling, where it vanished beneath the tacked-up trim. There were cobwebs there, some fresh and gleaming-strong, others reduced to mere wisps. He studied them, fascinated, wondering where their owners hid when the fancy lightbulb sputtered on. He wondered about the fox, too, whether it could follow him here. He'd glimpsed it, briefly, prancing in the woods, but it hadn't spoken. Still hadn't spoken, not since he'd left home.

But he'd only heard the fox a few times, and it wasn't like it had ever been particularly helpful. Sure, maybe he could have kept Dean from that hunt, or maybe somehow prevented the Lafittes' discovery, but he hadn't and here they were. No use pining.

And besides, the fox wasn't real. _Not real_. He knew that. _Hold onto the damn facts, Sam_, he reminded himself, annoyed, and slumped back in his seat. He hated this part of himself, the broken bits of his brain that scattered into whichever fantasy presented itself and twined it with reality. His stupid, stupid shattered-mirror mind.

"Sam," Benny asked, "you gonna stay there on that couch all day, or would you rather come along to the store? We gotta get us some supplies."

_Couch_. Sam mouthed the word silently, glad for the name. He'd always loved words, printed or spoken, short and squat like _pond _or _blaze_, or stretched like the names he read in the stars. The stars weren't speaking either, he realized abruptly; they hadn't for years and he'd never noticed. Silent stars, silent fox, and Sam alone on a dusty couch in a city of pendulous music and smoke.

"Sam." Dean then, coming over, sitting. "Maybe you should stay here."

Sam nodded, grateful. The orange room was unsettling and scratched at his skin, but at least it was contained.

"Want me to wait with you?" Dean asked, his eyebrows pinching together the way they did when he was worried, and Sam clung to that, all the mooring he needed. Dean was worried; Dean shouldn't have to worry.

"No, I'll be fine. You go explore with Benny." The words sounded strange coming out of his mouth, too solid and sure to be his voice, but they seemed to convince Dean, at least.

Dean nodded, rose to his feet. "All right, Sam. Won't take more than a couple hours. You stay put and don't let anyone in, ok?" Sam nudged his face into the expression Dean would expect in response, and Dean laughed. "Yeah, I know, Sam. Not a kid anymore." His hand rested briefly on Sam's shoulder, warm and anchoring, and then Sam was alone.

He wasn't sure what to do. No one had given him direction, and he had no feel for the rhythm of this place. He felt out of joint, shaken, like he'd tripped on a branch and couldn't quite catch his footing. So he sat and settled for examining his new home from his spot on the couch. _Couch_.

_Strange word_, he thought. All scrunched-up and wrinkled like a rotten apple, like it needed to be spat to be said. There was the couch, patterned boldly in faded, harvest-colored flowers, shoved up against one yellow wall. A funny black box with glass for its front perched on a low table with thick legs, and above that hung a painting of two wood ducks flying over a lake, their wings slicked back for diving. The only other feature of this side of the room was the huge, single-paned window facing out over the street.

He stood and walked over to it, pressed his nose to the glass. It was pleasantly cool, no curtains to warm it. _A nice anchor_, he thought, and added that to the list of tricks he'd need to navigate this strange world.

Life teemed outside, cars and horses and people and squirrels, neatly trimmed trees and coy little flower boxes, ivy clinging to each crack in the walls. About as far from forest-quiet as he could get, and it should upset him; it had, in fact, when he'd found himself submerged in all that noise. But here, removed, looking down like the stars on ant-like creation, he felt calm.

He stood and watched and breathed, losing track of time entirely. The sky was blue, of course, but different from back home—wider and softer-edged, somehow—and it swarmed with fat, white clouds. Below him a man put his hands on a woman, snagged her by her narrow hips and hauled her in for a kiss. Dark skin, light skin, melding together, mouth on mouth. The woman melted into the kiss, her thin brown fingers raking his hair, and Sam stared a moment before remembering to blush and look away.

Suddenly jittery, he decided to explore the rest of his new home. A small kitchen adjoined the orange room, its brownish countertops littered with contraptions he didn't recognize and its walls bare save for one ugly and very green clock. Sam examined it briefly, curious as to where in all that thinness it hid its gears. There were two bedrooms, both of them dark and heavily curtained and crowded by clunky beds and quilts that looked like they'd never seen water. Sam opened the door to what he assumed was a closet, flicked the switch the way Benny had shown Dean, and blinked at the stark whiteness of the tiny room that appeared. He could guess its function easily enough by its resemblance to the bus-stop bathrooms they'd frequented on the way. It was musty, but at least not gross.

It wasn't like he could just go in the woods here.

He flicked off the light and shut the door with a thud. His fingers drummed on his thighs, energy buzzing through him with no outlet. He could go back to the window, he thought, but there were people out there doing things in the sight of God and everyone else that ought to be reserved for the dark shame of the marriage bed. Some of them were barely clothed, even. And the chairs at the kitchen table looked both heavily uncomfortable and like they might snap in half if he actually sat on one, so that was out.

Couch it was. "Couch," he said, spitting the word like a peach pit. It felt nice to say.

Once again seated among the garish flowers, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the cushion. This was nice. He could wait here, warm and quiet and comfortably still, until Dean and Benny returned with something for him to do.

He'd nearly drifted off when a twig snapped beside him. He opened his eyes and there was the fox, staring at him, inches away, its breath swarming hot and surprisingly sweet. "You don't belong here," he told it, annoyed. "Where've you been?"

It cocked its head, amusement bright in its flickering eyes. "I've been around, Sam. You haven't needed me."

Sam glared in response. He was back in the forested mountains, in the cold, moonlit night of his home, and he didn't want it. "Send me back," he demanded, and the fox threw its head back and laughed.

"You haven't gone anywhere, child. You called me; I came."

Sam crossed his arms and snorted, air puffing out of his nostrils like a heaving bull. "I didn't fucking call you."

"Ooo, look at you," the fox chortled. "Grown so feisty. You know, this is by far the best conversation we've had. You've been so," it waved its paw around like it was searching for a word, and Sam nearly choked at the humanness of the gesture. "So very faded, lately," it concluded, with a wrinkle to its forehead that indicated just what it thought of Sam's state of mind.

He wanted to ask what the hell that meant, or maybe to tell it to get out of his head already, but when he blinked it was gone and he was back in Benny's grandfather's dusty orange house. _Apartment._

And something was tickling his ribs, and it was Dean's stupid fingers, and Benny was standing there in the doorway chuckling, surrounded by the biggest, flimsiest pile of bags Sam had ever seen. He swatted Dean away and stood, panting. "What the hell, Dean?" he asked, irritation bleeding into his voice like dye.

For half a second, Dean just stared, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open, and then he doubled over in gasping laughter. Benny patted his back, telling him to "c'mon, Dean, just breathe." And Sam wished he knew what they found so funny.

"Oh God," Dean said, when he finally caught his breath and straightened. "Sam. You _swore_ at me." His eyes shone and he grinned hugely, but something horrible clutched in Sam's chest, something slimy and dark and slithering, and he fled into one of the stale-smelling bedrooms and slammed the door behind him.

When Dean found him later, he was crouched on the bed and rocking, humming something under his breath that neither he nor Dean could hear.

* * *

The next time Sam ventured out was easier. He'd waited a few days, holed himself up safe and silent in one of the airless bedrooms. It was Dean that dragged him out, of course; the weight of Dean's concern had grown to a heavy, tangible thing that crept into his room and forced sympathy into the acid churn of his gut. Dean knew there was something wrong; Dean needed him to get better. He could pretend, at least, for Dean. He was good at pretending.

But he hadn't needed to pretend after all, once he'd gotten outside. The rain that morning had cleared the air, sucked the dust and the grime and the smoke right down into the sewers Benny said rushed beneath them. So the air was fresh and the light burned clean, and even if he felt a little odd and conspicuous, out in all of that daylight, it still felt good.

They were going to a bookstore, Dean had said. _Dean and Sam, Sam and Dean_. To find him something to do. Benny was somewhere; Sam had largely given up trying to track his movements. There were deadlines and papers and forms and meetings, terms Sam could define but not decipher. Something about school, child services; a woman Sam had to meet with later that week. Placement testing and extenuating circumstances. He liked the word _extenuating_. Very self-referential.

He pursed his lips and tried to whistle, but his mouth was too dry. Ants were crawling right there in front of him, swarming something wet and sticky and dripped all over the sidewalk. He crouched down to watch them, their little black bodies and bent-twig legs. He liked ants, so long as they weren't crawling on him. They tickled, then, and sometimes they bit. Tight little jaws, synchronized movements. Marching, following. Predictable.

"Sammy." Dean's voice, worried. Sam looked up at the deepening line between Dean's eyebrows and smiled to soothe it. It worked, a little. "C'mon, Sam. I need to get a job, and you need something to keep that big brain of yours busy while I work, get you ready for school. We'll stop by the bookstore, maybe check out some places that are hiring afterwards, ok? Let's go."

Dean's hand on his shoulder, pulling him up, long fingers clutching his collarbone. When Dean started walking, Sam followed. Dean always knew what to do.

The bookstore was as dusty as Benny's apartment. Tall shelves cast looming shadows in the dim light, blanketing the towering stacks of books in near-total darkness. Sam wandered a little, poking at dustjackets, heaving great breaths of the mildewed air. It tasted strange in his mouth, green and old and promising.

"Hello, boys." A warm voice, feminine. "What can I do for you?"

"Hi. I'm Dean," Dean said beside him. "This is my kid brother Sam. I'm lookin' for somethin' to get genius boy here up to speed for school." He smacked Sam's arm, and Sam smiled like he was supposed to.

The woman laughed. Dimples lined her face, thick, happy indents, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. Narrow eyes, Sam realized, and decided he liked her. "I'm Pamela," she said, sticking out her hand and shaking Dean's. "I'm sure we can find something to suit you." Dean flashed his most charming grin, more of a smirk really, Sam thought. He wondered if his brother was really that much more confident than he was, or if Dean was just better at pretending.

"And Sam, right?" Pamela said, extending her hand to Sam this time. He stared at it, the long, perfect fingernails, the clutter of rings. Smooth skin stretched over narrow knuckles, clean and pink and freshly scrubbed, and Sam felt reluctant to blemish it. But Dean nudged him, and Sam took her hand like he knew Dean wanted and shook it a little.

He felt strangely conscious of the pressure between them, the placement of each of his fingertips. He hadn't met that many people; most of the ones he knew, he'd known forever. And what were handshakes anyway? People gripping appendages like dogs sniffing each other's scent, like you could sense a man's measure from his grip—but Pamela seemed to be trying. She cupped her free palm over the back of Sam's hand and cocked her head, considering. "Sam," she said again. "I'm very glad to meet you." Her eyes were thick with something that looked like sympathy and too much comprehension, and Sam released her like a brand.

Dean shot him a peculiar look, then followed Pamela to the back of the shop. Sam was free to explore. He looked around, twitchy, suddenly irritated with the endless expanse of time and space stretching all around him, like he could do anything, go anywhere his feet could carry him, but no one would give him a map. He kicked at a bookshelf and released a cloud of dust and tumbling paperbacks. And there was the guilt, of course, stabbing hot and sharp in his stomach like Dean's knife gutting a deer, and he scurried to gather the books. His hands shook as he reshelved them, itchy with adrenaline and so much dust, clouds and layers and rainstorms of dust all over this damned city, suffocating him. It coated his lungs and he wanted to kick the bookshelf again, harder this time, but he didn't. He stood instead, shivering, gasping for the mildewed, dusty air, sick to his stomach.

Sam leaned against the wall but it wasn't cool like the window, couldn't ground him. He slid his palms over gritty plaster—too smooth, no slots for his fingers. There was a line, though, scratched deep in the surface, and he turned to look. A star—_pentagram_, his brain supplied from somewhere—etched and circled in the plaster. He traced it with one trembling fingertip, its uneven depth, its perfect lines. The wall was covered in them, he realized, carvings everywhere, crude or intricate, some geometrical, some these wild, sprawling things.

He was inspecting one of the carvings—a tree with braided, reaching branches—when Dean called him. "Hey Sam," Dean said. "Come check this out."

Sam followed Dean's voice down a narrow walkway, back to a hidden corner of the shop. Dean handed him a book, big and heavy and new-looking. _A History of the United States_, it read in block letters. _Third edition_. "You always did like history," Dean said with a shrug. "Figured you might want to sort through some of the facts, work out what really happened, what didn't. Found you one on biology, too, and American literature. Guess you're probably in the right place on math already."

_In the right place for what_, Sam wanted to ask, but didn't. He turned instead to the history book, ran his fingers over the sticky binding. _What happened, what didn't; sort through the facts_.

"Who's Jesse?" Dean asked, and Sam glanced up sharply. But Dean was looking at Pamela, and Pamela was rolling her eyes, running her fingers over the letters printed on her lower back. A curving expanse of golden skin, curving letters, and Sam's mind blanked. He knew what it was, of course, had learned about the tattoos used to mark slaves, working women. But "Jesse forever" seemed a strange sort of mark.

"Well, it wasn't forever," she snorted.

"His loss," Dean said, flashing her that wide grin that had all the girls back home weak in the knees.

Pamela didn't reply to that, but Sam could read the offer in the set of her shoulders, the frank appreciation of her gaze. _Might be your gain_ echoed in his head, sharp and unbidden, and he choked, caught at the wall for balance. Pamela looked at him strangely, green eyes piercing, burning like the fox's. And Dean was there, of course, his big, stupid hands warm and supportive as always, clutching Sam's shoulders, holding him upright. Sam shrugged him off, suddenly angry, and stalked away. He felt Dean hesitate behind him, heard him ask Pamela about the cost of the books.

"On the house," he heard Pamela answer. "Got some of my own experience with those wackos." Sam didn't want to hear anymore. He pushed through the door into the bright southern sunlight, no dust motes dancing now, not after the rain. The air was clear and clean and liquid, and he thought he might drown in it.

He wondered just how much Dean had told her, what there was even to tell. He closed his eyes and was twelve again, his bright certainty in himself, his father, dissolving under the weight of John's disgust. _I don't know, I don't know_.

Sam forced his eyes open and stared at the sky, blue and broad, stretched like flailing arms with no mountains to contain it. He thought of the map Benny'd tacked up in the apartment, New Orleans shuttered like a gate, a breakwall. Lake Ponchartrain on one side and Lake Borgne on the other, and then the wide, wide gulf. A seagull squawked overhead, appropriately, Sam thought. He half-expected it to speak.

_Anchor yourself to the facts. _He doubled in half then, choking with laughter, little bubbles of tension and fear rising up through his throat, his mouth, released to the sun-scorched air. He stood at last with a painful gasp, hungry for breath, someone's long fingers wiping spit from his mouth. His own fingers, he realized absently. He sounded like the seagull, cackling like that.

Dean came through the door. He blinked in the glare, asked if Sam was good to go. Sam nodded at him and grinned, wide and sharp-edged, his eyes dry and fever-hot. Dean looked unsure for a second but shook his head and clapped Sam's shoulder. They left.

* * *

"It's been five days, Benny," Dean said, glaring as if Sam's silence was somehow Benny's fault. "Five days without a single fucking word."

Benny eyed him back, his arms crossed defensively in front of him. They'd had this conversation before, and Dean knew now wasn't the time to have it again. The two of them were crusty with sleep, their eyes bleary in the harsh overhead light. _Too fucking early_, he thought groggily, and resumed pacing.

They were in the kitchen, chugging at the chicory-laced coffee Dean had already come to love. Sam was asleep, or just brooding in the dark, who knew. "I gotta work. You said that was important, me proving I can take care of Sam." He stuck his finger out at Benny, jabbed him in the chest.

"So take him with you!" Benny shoved him back, his normally placid voice shimmering with heat. "It's a damn gym. He'll be fine there. And quit your glaring. This ain't my doing, and you know it."

Dean sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I know," he said, slumping down on the chair. "Sorry, Benny. It's just—I don't know."

"Yeah," Benny said. He took the chair next to Dean and slung his arm casually over Dean's shoulders.

It wasn't a new gesture—they'd joked and wrestled and clapped manly hugs to each others' backs ever since they'd met—but Benny's arm felt somehow heavier than it should, and Dean shrugged him off uneasily. "You're right, anyway," he said to break the tension. "I'll take him with me, just tell Terry—shit. What the hell do I tell Terry?"

"You don't gotta tell him nothin'," Benny said. "Or you can just say somethin' happened to Sam and he don't talk much. Not like it's his business anyway."

"Yeah, yeah. You're right. Thanks, Benny." He took another swallow of coffee, felt the burn of it all the way down his throat. "So," he said, figuring he might as well ask while he had the chance. "This is your grandfather's place, right?"

"Sure is," Benny answered. "Spent many a weekend afternoon here as a kid. He used to help my momma out, keep an eye on me when she was workin'. Take me fishin' and such. He passed on, oh, I don't know, three or four years ago? Things kinda went downhill after that."

"Huh," Dean said. Benny never spoke much about his family. "So your mom knows about this place. You expect to hear from her?"

Benny snorted. "Nah. Not unless that daddy of yours asks all the right questions. Momma is—well, I love her like nothin' else, but her mind ain't been the same since her daddy died. She won't be looking for me."

It was the most Benny had ever shared about his personal life. Dean supposed it should be a good thing—the two of them bonding or whatever—but he just felt itchy. He muttered his sympathy, fidgeted around the kitchen for awhile. When he ran out of things to do he figured he might as well wake Sam up.

He walked to the room they were supposed to be sharing and slammed the door open. A little more forceful than necessary, maybe, but he'd been sleeping on that hideous couch for a week to give Sam some space, and still Sam wouldn't talk. And yeah, the school placement interview had gone ok, but no thanks to Sam. Dean had been nervous as shit—it wasn't like he knew any more than Sam did—and he'd managed to carry the whole conversation. At least they didn't have to worry about Sam keeping their story straight. And now all he had to do was show himself competent at providing for Sam, and that required keeping a job, so—

"Get dressed, Sammy. You're coming with me."

There was no answer, of course, but the blanket-mound shifted and Sam's head peeked out. He blinked at Dean, little flashes of reflected light from the kitchen, and then pulled himself up to sitting. Sam moved stiffly, like his muscles had forgotten how to time themselves, dragged one shoe on, then the other. He stood and shuffled to the doorway.

"How long have you been wearing those clothes?" Dean asked, annoyed, and part of him wanting Sam to know it.

Sam shrugged.

"Whatever," Dean muttered. "C'mon already."

It was raining—_of course it's raining_, Dean thought—thick rivulets of water from the night-black sky that wormed past his collar and down between his shoulderblades. They showed up at Terry's gym, wet and dripping, gooseflesh prickling on their arms. Dean banged on the door until a harried-looking woman opened it, frowning over her horn-rimmed glasses. She let them in when Dean identified himself as Terry's newest hire—_Maintenance staff_, Terry had said. _Not all that exciting_—and tossed towels at them, clucking her tongue at the puddles of water they dripped on the entryway mat.

"Who's this?" she asked, nodding toward Sam. Her eyes were crinkled and calculating behind her glasses, as if she expected Sam to make off with her purse or impregnate her daughter or something. Dean would have scowled, but he needed the job.

"Sam here's my kid brother," Dean said, settling for squaring his shoulders instead. "He's tagging along for the day. Hope that's ok. He's real quiet, won't be any trouble. I promise."

Sam blinked at her owlishly, looking all of thirteen years old, and her glare turned soft and motherly. "Aw honey, of course," she crooned, and Dean twitched at the sudden change of tone. "You can sit up here with me, help me with some filing. Maybe Terry will even give you some pocket money."

"Uh," Dean said, nervous, running a hand through his hair. "He don't talk much. Traumatic past or whatever. You know."

Sam glared at him, but Dean ignored it, and if anything his words seemed to soften the woman further. "Oh, that's fine, sweetie," she said, patting Sam's arm. "Just you come along with me. We'll get you set up nice and comfortable. I'm Luce, by the way," she added. "Now you two come on in and get yourselves warm."

Dean followed behind them, muttering under his breath. Trust Sam to charm his way into the harridan's good graces. But true to her word, she sat Sam down at her desk and wrapped a towel around his shoulders. "You like coffee, honey? Cream and sugar?"

Sam blinked again, nodded. Dean was surprised; he hadn't seen Sam so much as try a sip. But then Luce was tugging his arm, leading him forward. "C'mon now, sweetheart. I'll get you and your brother here some coffee, then take you to Terry. He's out back settin' up."

The kitchen she led him to was tiny and shockingly orange, sunk back into the wall like an afterthought. She poured him a mug and fixed one for Sam, chatting all the while. Dean tuned her out, mostly, listening just enough to add the appropriate "yes ma'am, no ma'am" when her monologue demanded it. He followed her down the long hallway, footsteps muted by the faded brown carpet, until she shoved him through a double-door and shouted, "Help's here, Terry!"

He blinked in his new surroundings. The room was wide-open and brightly lit, polished grey tile on the floor. There were contraptions everywhere—some he knew to call punching bags, most were unrecognizable. The main feature was a large, roped off ring he suddenly realized was for the fights. Practice, he hoped.

"Dean!" Terry said, appearing from behind another door. He wiped sweat off his forehead with a towel and offered his free hand to Dean. "Good to see ya." He grinned at Dean's obvious appreciation. "Nice place, huh? Keeps the customers loyal."

He showed Dean the ropes, poking his head into various bathrooms, explaining the uses for the many fluorescent bottles of cleaning products. "We open at six," Terry said, "So you gotta be here by five, at the latest. Shouldn't be too much to do first thing—night cleaning crew takes care of most of it—but we get pretty busy right about openin' time. Gotta keep the showers clean, wipe down the equipment, that sort of thing. Think you can handle it?"

Dean assured him he could, and set to work. It was maybe a lie, a half-lie at least, but he managed to keep himself busy. Men started bustling in not twenty minutes later, and women, too, their hard lines of muscle bare and gleaming in the overhead light. Terry joked with them effortlessly, hands waving while he spoke, drops of sweat sliding down the thin scar that bisected one of his wiry eyebrows. He wasn't a big guy—lean and short and contained like boot-packed earth—but he moved like a coiled spring, and Dean knew he could defend himself if he needed to.

Sam chose that moment to enter, his mouth slack and his cheeks red like he'd fallen asleep in a corner somewhere. Terry saw him, moved toward him, and Dean was all the way on the other side of the room, couldn't get there in time. He dropped his dustrag, strode toward them on feet that refused to run, afraid of what, he didn't know.

But then Terry was clapping Sam's shoulder, and Sam was grinning shyly, and when he finally got close enough for Sam to notice, Sam looked at him, ducked his head, and said, "Hey, Dean."

Dean blinked, and for one wild second all he could think was _Sam's expression, shouldn't steal it_. But Terry was grinning, offering to show Sam around, and Sam was grinning, too, no fever in his eyes, so Dean nodded, said it was fine by him. He watched them go, caught the loose set of Sam's shoulders, the thinness of his arms. Sam was taller than Terry, he noticed absently, but scrawny. Too little meat on too thin bones, like that baby bird they'd found once. Tiniest little robin he'd ever seen, fallen from its nest. Sam had wanted to rescue it, had picked it up, cradled it in his baby-fat hands. The bird was all big eyes and sticky feathers, and Dean had known it wouldn't make it—too young, the air still too cold. But Sam had been determined, had fashioned a little nest for it in the barn, offered it the bundle of fat worms he'd dug up by the stream. Dean had snuck out later that night, taken it away. Made up a story for Sam in the morning, how he'd seen the mother bird come back for it. And Sam had been so happy, so relieved, trusting Dean like always.

Sam was with Terry now, punching at a bag awkwardly. Terry laughed and adjusted Sam's shoulders, straightened his hips. Sam blushed but didn't seem offended. He scrunched up his face like he always did when he concentrated, that little stubborn line between his eyebrows, and tried again. _Better_, Dean thought, but then Terry took a turn, whip-quick and lethal, his fists flashing one-two-one-two against the dark leather of the bag. Sam was staring now, awed and determined, and Dean figured he might as well let Sam have a go. Not like Sam would listen if he protested, not with that look on his face. Sam was glowering at that damn bag like it was John himself, and wouldn't that be a sight, meek little Sammy taking a swing at their father?

Dean spent the morning wiping sweat from vinyl and soap scum from tile, until his knuckles burned with the harshness of the cleaner he'd chosen at random. _Probably should've paid more attention_, he thought, and his stomach growled loudly.

He left the bathroom and went to find Sam, figuring they could head out soon and grab something to eat. It was a part-time job, Terry'd explained, five to noon every day but Thursdays and Sundays. Didn't have to fork out benefits that way. Considering how Dean had never had a paying job in his life and didn't have to worry about housing, it was good enough for him.

He pushed through the double doors into the gym, sticky with sweat and grime and cleaner, and glanced around for Sam. There was some commotion over by the ring, someone fighting by the sound of it. He glared idly in that direction, irritated at Sam, himself, the whole goddamn South, all sticky sweat and salt-moss air, and froze.

Sam was in the ring, shirtless. His fists were bound in heavy boxing gloves, and his hair stuck in sweat-soaked curls on the back of his neck. He was fighting, fire in his eyes and grace in his step, dancing back and forth like a pouncing wildcat, grinning hugely. It wasn't Terry with him; Dean spotted his boss leaned up against the side, calling out directions, looking proud and fatherly, almost. The man in the ring was huge, dark-skinned and broad-shouldered, cords of muscles down his back as thick as Dean's arms, and he was taking it easy on Sam, Dean could tell. But Sam moved like he belonged, like he was one of them, and all Dean could see was the pale, belt-scarred skin and the fragile bird-bones, and his heart was a stone lodged in his throat, and he watched, helpless, as Sam feinted and ducked and laughed.

* * *

By the end of the summer, Sam had a whole pack of devotees, nevermind that he barely ever put more than two words together. Luce still thought he was a baby, treated him like the long-lost son she'd never had, offered him endless batches of beignets, still warm and bundled in little tea towels. Terry, who turned ought to be Luce's long-term live-in boyfriend, took Sam under his wing, hellbent on "makin' a man outta him."

And then there was Pamela, whom Sam adored, so long as she wasn't making passes at Dean. He would have ignored her advances anyway, what with all the weirdness with Benny. Dean sighed, flopped over in bed, pressed his face into the damp heat of his pillow. It was Sunday, his day off, and he'd wanted to catch up on some sleep. Sam, who had school the next morning—his first day, and it shouldn't be so terrifying—had bounced out of bed early, off to the bookstore or gym or God knows where. He never told Dean, anymore.

Sam had stumbled in late the night before, eyes red and hazy, reeking of smoke and whiskey and something earthy-sweet that made Benny's eyebrows crinkle together. He'd brushed them both off and face-planted in bed, Dean's old, scuffed boots still stuck on his feet, and immediately commenced snoring.

Dean had wanted to wake him, demand some answers, maybe, but Benny had caught his arm, his hand lingering just a shade too long as always. Dean had noticed something in his eyes then, something he'd only ever seen in the girls back home, in Pamela's shameless smirk, but it was harder somehow, more defensive. He'd pulled away and climbed into bed, tired and angry and wishing they'd all just get on with life and stop making everything so damn complicated. Benny'd stood there awhile, watching, before he padded out and clamped the door shut.

And now it was morning, sunlight pushing through the crack in his door like a whining puppy. Dean groaned and sat up, glad at least that Benny was gone, too. He'd be off at that diner, the one owned by his cousin, Liz or Livvy or something like that. Dean had met her, once, stopping by to check on Benny at his new job. He'd been shocked speechless when Benny'd introduced her, had no idea Benny still had family here. That had prompted a long conversation, Benny explaining it was just them left, her parents dead, his dad long gone, run off with a biker chick years ago. Dean had stared at him, stunned and a little hurt Benny hadn't told him before. Benny'd met his eyes and shrugged, not apologizing but not defensive either. They'd sat like that until the silence had grown awkward and Dean had left, slapping a handful of change on the table to pay for his cup of coffee. He hadn't gone back.

He staggered out to the kitchen, fumbling at the buttons on the heaven-sent coffeepot, decidedly not thinking about how he was losing both his brother and his best friend, all in one go. At least there was this, coffee in the morning, steady work to keep them fed, no one threatening Sam. He dropped a slice of bread into the toaster, shoved the plunger down. He'd laughed when Benny'd explained its purpose—_a whole gadget just to brown bread_—but he'd grown accustomed to the ease of it, the greasy slide of butter on crisp bread in the morning, washed down with bitter coffee. _A whole new life_, he thought and laughed. It sounded harsh in the quiet, barbed-wire scraping the sides of his throat, sharp dissonance to the steady burble of the coffee pot. But why not laugh? Here they were, miles away, free as birds in the broad, blue Louisiana sky. Even giving in to Benny wouldn't be wrong here. It wasn't something he'd even known was done, before, but he'd seen it here: two men stealing kisses in the back of the gym, women pressed up together in an alleyway.

Here was color and noise and moss, sugar-sweet on the tip of his tongue, sharp like whiskey on his throat. A whole new set of rules, and nevermind what Sam thought, he didn't always follow the rules, but it sure helped to know what they were. He liked the practicality of them, always had, the steady thrum of action and consequence like daybreak following nightfall. That's all it had ever been for him, rules of existence, rules of survival. Never much thought to the faith that shaped them. Life was decision, movement, point A to point B, and God was beyond that, intangible, uninteresting. A mindset inherited from his father, he figured: fight, survive.

It made some sense now, John's simultaneous lack of faith and dedication to it. Dean had found a few of the pieces, at least, though he'd yet to put them all together. He crunched his toast, chased it with coffee, closed his eyes. A horn honked outside, someone driving, irritated at being obstructed. Dean could sympathize. Crumbs gathered around his plate, on the floor, and Dean ignored them. He did enough wiping at work.

He stood and stretched. He could shower, he thought, indulge in yet another blessing of their new existence. Every damn morning if he wanted to. He recalled that first shower, Benny laughing, adjusting the knobs for him, bursts of hot, clean water massaging his back. So different from the hasty washing back home, dancing from one foot to the other to keep warm on cold mornings while he scrubbed at his skin. Or the long ordeal of heating and hauling to fill the barely used tub, water cool by the time he got in, scummy brown when he finished. He'd never felt that clean, not really. Not like this.

The spray of water now felt good on his skin. He rubbed at his face, thinking of Sam, of Pamela. _A psychic_, she'd said, open and unashamed. A psychic running a used bookstore, holding seances out back, as if that were normal. Maybe it was; Dean didn't know.

Dean knew about psychics, though, or thought he did, anyway. Parasites on the already downtrodden. John had told him about them one night, coming back from the woods looking flushed and fevered, hair matted to his sweaty brow. His words had slurred, anger dripping into bellowed curses that had burned shame into Dean's ears, back then.

He understood better now—those fruitless "hunting trips," the lies that formed the bedrock of their community. John Winchester was an incurable drunk, and they'd been isolated enough out there in the woods for no one else to notice. Or maybe they had noticed, and just hadn't cared.

The revelations from the outside world had come slowly, bits of understanding that always uncovered yet another lie. A chink here, a chink there, each one tiny and insignificant and earth-shattering.

All that stuff, tools and books and glass, breakable things he'd assumed had somehow survived the twenty-odd years of communal living. Fields that magically found themselves planted after abysmal harvests, the seed stores somehow never giving out.

He hadn't made the connection when Benny first told him, maybe just hadn't wanted to see it. He saw it now. The kids might believe, but the adults didn't. They'd all embraced the deception, every last one of them, his sonofabitch father included. And for John, at least, the religion screeched from the pulpit each Sunday was just another part of that lie.

_Why the belt, Dad?_ he wanted to ask. _Why that goddamned belt?_ But John wasn't here; they'd left him behind with the rest of the lies, and Dean didn't miss him. Maybe Sam did, who knew. Maybe Sam still bought the fairytale man in the sky, handing out judgment like candy. It wasn't like Sam would've said if he did.

Dean slammed the water off to halt his trainwreck thoughts. The towel he grabbed was scratchy and damp from Sam's morning shower, didn't do much to dry him, but he shrugged into his clothes anyway. His jeans stuck to his wet skin, chafing as he pulled them up. He tugged harder, glad for the distraction.

He struck out into the muggy September heat to find Sam. He'd check the bookstore first, figuring it to be the most likely; Sam usually trained with Terry while Dean worked, spent the rest of his time with Pamela. Sure enough, there Sam was, his outline dim and hazy in the gloom, sitting with Pamela at the counter. Their hands were clasped, eyes closed. Dean cleared his throat, annoyed but not surprised. They did this a lot, Pamela trying to read Sam or whatever, fix the parts of Sam's mind he knew Sam thought were broken. It irked him, both their closeness and that ever-present thought that something was wrong with Sam, the one lie that had insisted on following them here.

Sam heard him, and his eyes flew open. He flushed and looked away, panic and something else, something feral, burning in his eyes. Dean stood frozen in place as Sam dropped Pamela's hands and ran out the door, running from him, the little brother he'd only ever wanted to protect, his one failure that gleamed brightest among so many others. He stood and watched like he'd done so many other times, hating himself.

* * *

It was early April. Winter ravaged the mountains still, but its grip was loosening. The larger streams were thawing, thick chunks of ice dragged along in slush to the valley below. Cold in the day, colder at night, but survivable. It was time.

John stood and brushed off his coat. Glanced over at his empty bed, missing the shared warmth more than he missed Christelle. Fever, the doctor had said, and he'd known she'd pull through at a proper hospital, but she'd refused. He'd figured it had more to do with Benny leaving, after that.

He'd mourned her appropriately, but there'd only ever been one woman for him. Christelle had known that when she'd agreed to marry him. Wasn't anybody's fault.

Just his boys left now. Bright-eyed Dean, sullen Sammy. He'd wanted to track them straightaway, had even poked around the nearby woods some, but Christelle had insisted his place was here. He resented her for that, a little.

But now she was gone, and he'd find them. They needed him, didn't know what they were getting into, the bleak, selfish horror of the outside world. He knew he'd been tough on little Sammy, that Dean resented him for it. But they didn't know, couldn't remember Mary stretched out and gutted on the nursery floor, her blood pooling cold and sticky by the time he'd found her. Little Sammy lying in his crib, blinking impassively, Mary's blood reflected in the green of his eyes. That goddamned psychic he'd sought in desperation when the police couldn't find anything, that quack who'd tried to read Sam and failed because Sam was blocking her, she'd claimed, crooning that he was a little psychic himself.

And then that phone call, the murderer caught; the truth of it worse than not knowing. The long nights afterwards, sleepless or plagued by dreams of strangers' blades shredding soft, vulnerable bellies. Needing to protect them, his two little boys, so precious, so helpless. Knowing he couldn't. He'd heard of a refuge, then, grapevine sort of thing. Hadn't believed it at first, not until he'd found it himself. And then the years spent safe and hazy and drunk, shattered by Sammy's journal, his own son consorting with the worst of them, visions and dreams and talking stars, and what was he to do?

John shouldered his pack, squared his jaw, and shut the cabin door behind him. Resent him or not, his boys needed him, and he was going to find them and protect them, even from themselves.


	4. Chapter 4

_And God said, prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only the wind will listen_

The hand shot out, twisting expertly, a whipcord bunch and release of muscle under sunbrowned skin. The bag surrendered a soft thud, bounced back. He was shirtless, had been at it awhile by the looks of the sweat pooled in the hollows of his collarbones, the small of his back. Taller, too, and still skinny, but thrumming now with pent-up energy and anger. Done well for himself, then.

The boy looked up, wiped his forehead. Met his gaze and returned it impassively. He pulled his shirt over his head, and it clung to his sweat, spreading dark, damp patches all along his back. Looked over once more, nodded to himself. Stalked away.

He watched the boy leave, all feline grace and threat. If he looked hard, he could still see it: the sweet, sullen submission of his boy, the way he used to hunch his shoulders, hide behind his hair. Buried now, not gone, but maybe not reachable by him.

Dean, then.

* * *

Sam pressed his palms to the wall in front of him, fighting to calm his ragged breath. His heart beat loud in his ears, all that blood rushing and rushing, nowhere to go. He'd fled the gym as soon as the door slammed behind him, as soon as John couldn't see. He could be anywhere now—no telling how long he'd run—but the adrenaline high was wearing off and he could feel the tremors starting, unwanted tears and sobs building, pushing for release.

John was here. The how didn't matter so much as the fact of it, the _what, now?_ John was here and Sam knew Dean wouldn't make him leave. Didn't have it in him, not really. John was here, and he was staying.

He leaned back against the wall, slid down. It was May and the alley was wet, sticky with refuse and old beer that seeped through his jeans and chilled the pulsing heat of his blood. Sam dropped his head to his hands and clutched his temples. The anger was gone, the rage he'd so carefully honed into muscle and reflex, and now John was here and he was splitting in two once more, shattering into dust and ground glass.

It might be dark soon; he might have missed the night already. Couldn't be sure. Someone was fighting nearby, he thought, two or three of them maybe. Sharp crack of flesh on flesh, shouted curses. English blended with something else, unrecognizable. Not Terry's native Tagalog then, or Luce's angry French—though to be fair, most words sounded angry coming from Luce, like honey laced with pepper.

Sam knew he was wandering—old instinct to pick a fact, cling to it. The dark was creeping closer, streetlights flickering on. He needed to get home. He pushed to his feet and stumbled through the alleyway, wondering how far he'd gone, how long it would take to get back. A grey mist filled the night, fog rising from the river. The droplets clung to his eyelashes and the baby-fine hairs on his cheeks. _Like whiskers_, he thought, and laughed.

* * *

Dean stared at the papers in front of him, sighing. They puffed out with his breath, spreading like smoke across the table. He grimaced at them, dared them to disappear. They didn't.

Why he'd volunteered to take over the paperwork, he didn't know. Benny'd seemed a little stretched thin, lately, that was all. Not like he felt like he owed Benny something. _Owe Benny fucking everything_.

He stood, sat back down. Slammed his palms on the table and shoved the papers to the floor. Like filling out a few forms somehow made up for his being a total ass. He glared at the now-empty tabletop and considered beating his head into it instead.

A knock sounded, solid thud of bone on wood. For a full half-minute Dean stared, dumbly wondering whether he'd actually gone ahead and whacked his skull, maybe shaken a few brain cells loose in the process. He waited for the pain to set in.

The knock came again.

_Door_, his unbattered brain supplied, jarring his feet into motion. The snick of the lock, long scrape of the bolt sliding free, metallic squeak of the door handle turning. Each motion, each sound, catalogued and preserved, as if he knew.

Later, he'd think maybe he had.

It was John, of course, standing in the doorway, a bulky shadow against the yellow-orange light of the room. For a second Dean forgot to be terrified, or angry, or any of a number of other sensible emotions. All he could feel in that first moment was homesick. There within reach was the familiar build of his father, the clean scent of pines and hay, the shape of his childhood in worn leather and canvas. He leaned forward on instinct. Stopped himself.

He stepped back. John followed him into the room, into the light, and he could see new lines on his father's face, a purplish tint to his nose. Frostbite, or maybe just alcohol. John's eyes were hard as always, dark and glittering in the lamplight, but still his father's eyes.

Dean swallowed, squared his shoulders. "Dad," he said, not able to manage more without his voice betraying him.

"Hi, son." John's lips cracked into a lazy shark's grin as he spoke, all glinting teeth and easy charm. It might have worked, before, but Dean knew that smile, had used it himself.

He narrowed his eyes, frowned. "Why're you here?" Heart being faster; harder and harder to keep fear from bleeding into his words.

John shrugged. "Christelle died," he said in answer, dragging his bag into the room and slinging it on the couch. "Figured I'd go find my boys."

Dean's gaze flitted from the bag back to his father, down again. He wondered if this was how Sam felt, too much reality crowding his brain, strangling rational thought. "You can't stay here," he blurted, shocking himself with the words.

John nodded though, as if it were to be expected, this refusal of shelter by his son. "I'll just be a few days. Week at most. Got some accounts still set up from before, never bothered to close them. Didn't really need cash in the mountains."

"No, Dad—"

"Just a few days, Dean," John interrupted, smooth as butter. "I'll get my own place then." He sat on the couch, propped his feet up on the heavy wood of the coffee table. Familiar motion, a scene plucked straight from Dean's childhood: grimy layer of sweat and mud, John leaning back, one ankle crossed over the other. Boots still on, always, like John had to be ready to go, even in rest.

"Yeah, ok," Dean stuttered. "I'll just—"

"It's late, Dean," John said, pulling a flask from his pocket and taking a long drink. His eyes held Dean's as he swallowed, daring Dean to protest, to put to words the truth of the situation, the absurdity of it.

Dean didn't. He couldn't. John had won; John always won. He slunk out the door instead, grabbing his jacket on the way. He needed to find Sam.

* * *

It didn't take long. He found his brother in the alley outside, leaned up against the wall, a cigarette clamped tightly between his lips. The thin, wet cotton of Sam's shirt clung to his arms, his chest; water dripped down the side of his face from his soaked hair. His jacket had fallen to the concrete beside him, and Dean picked it up, eased it gingerly over Sam's freezing torso. Threaded one arm through the sleeve, then the other. Sam didn't speak, didn't acknowledge him at all, just relaxed back into the wall once Dean was done.

"You got one of those for me?" Dean asked, nodding toward the cigarette.

Sam shrugged, handed it over. "Bummed it off some guy in the park," he said.

Dean took a drag of thick smoke, the paper still damp from Sam's lips. He blew out slowly, rising curls of smoke that twisted and dissolved into the fog. "Dad's here," he said, staring at the sky. The edges of the stars were hazy in the mist, their light spreading out like the tufts of old dandelions waiting to catch the wind. Huge, ancient sisters to the streetlight that sputtered nearby. Light in the dark, water in the air, dust caked to mud on the street below him.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Saw him." He reached for the cigarette, sucked down the smoke like he was starving for it. Dean wondered when he'd started smoking, remembered Sam choking on the smell of it their first day here.

"He'll just be a few days. Gonna get his own place soon."

Sam nodded, unsurprised. They stood for awhile, silent, separate in the hazy dark. Sam smoked down to the filter, stubbed it out on the wall beside him and dropped it to join the others already littering the street. He pushed away from the wall, miles of coiled, lean muscle, ready to walk inside. _Getting taller_, Dean thought suddenly. _Too tall, too fast_. _Body can't keep up with it_.

"Sam," Dean said, grabbing his shoulder. "Sammy. He's not gonna touch you. I won't let him."

Sam snorted and turned to meet Dean's eyes. A smile broke across his brother's face, a thin, brittle, sympathetic smile that Dean didn't understand, didn't want to understand. He patted Sam's shoulder once more and turned to head upstairs.

John was already asleep, stretched out on the couch like he belonged there, boots hanging over the side. The lamp was off, Sam's face hidden in shadow as he stared at their father. Dean watched him, those high cheekbones catching the light from the hallway like paper cuts, thin, delicate lines of white on black. Sam turned, the shadows turning with him. He caught Dean's eye and held it for a heartbeat, disappeared into their bedroom.

The light in the bathroom burned cold and white, shocking after the darkness of the living room. Dean brushed his teeth mechanically, rinsed his mouth, splashed some water on his face. He finished his nightly rituals more quickly than he intended, found himself lost for what to do next. Figured he might as well floss while he was in there. Flossing was yet another of Benny's lessons.

When Dean finally forced himself into the bedroom, Sam was in bed, his back to the doorway. The curtains were pulled, moonlight filtering in with the misty breeze from the open window. Dean climbed in beside his brother, nuzzled his toes in cool of the blankets, kept his distance. He closed his eyes. He felt like he should be panicking, planning at least, figuring out how to twist this impossible situation into something that wouldn't break them. His mind was blank, though, foggy like the night outside. It wasn't hard at all to drift to sleep.

Dean woke not long after to muffled cursing and sudden light streaming through the bedroom door he'd forgotten to close. He rolled over and checked the clock. Just Benny getting back, then.

_Benny._

_John._

Dean swore and stumbled out of bed, down the narrow hallway. Benny stood in the living room, eyes murderous, staring at John. John looked unfazed, his mouth curled up in a little half-smile, but his hips were set to move and his shoulders were tight.

Dean grabbed Benny's arm, pulled him back. "Benny—"

Benny yanked himself free and lunged toward John. "Get out," he snarled, the veins in his neck pulsing dangerously.

Dean tried again. "Benny, it's just a couple days, just 'til he finds a place."

Benny whirled to face him, his eyes wide with disbelief. "What the hell, Dean? No. No way. This is my place, and that rat-bastard's not welcome." Dean could see it then, Benny's latent capability, the power he usually kept buried beneath layers of ease and Southern charm, exposed now like a live wire. Threatening his father.

"Benny, please," he begged, his voice sounding faint and impotent in his own ears. Sam stood in the doorway, a silent observer, and John looked triumphant. Dean ignored them both, couldn't help himself. This was his father. "Please."

Benny clenched his jaw and turned toward John. "Out," he repeated. John gave a mocking little bow, grabbed his bag from the coffee table, and left.

The door thudded closed behind him, a final, empty sound that drained the last of Dean's resolve. He sank to the floor, head in his hands. Sam came and crouched beside him, said nothing. Benny sat, too, leaned back on his outstretched arms and stared at the ceiling, visibly struggling to calm his breathing.

A cat screeched outside on the fire escape, in heat or in warning, Dean didn't know. He should be the one howling, wind ripping through the open wound in his chest, that gaping emptiness that had started out livid and red and angry, all those years ago. Numb now, grown into something whole and complete. His father here, turned away. Gone.

Sam leaned against him, a long line of heat that pressed into his side, grounding him. Benny crossed one ankle over his, and he couldn't bring himself to push it away. He wondered where the sun was. It had to be morning soon, had been years at least since John first appeared in the doorway, first cracked the fragile foundation of their new life. But it was dark still, fingers of the night clutching the corners of their building. Nothing but darkness and screeching cats, and John gone.

* * *

Sam woke up the next morning with grit in his eyes, sprawled on the living room carpet with Dean. The apartment was quiet, as quiet as apartments could be expected to get, at least. He could hear the low hum of a vacuum upstairs, the clatter of pots from the man next door who never seemed to stop cooking. A woman screamed at her kids in a blend of languages he couldn't follow. There was no sign of Benny, though, which wasn't particularly worrying. He was probably at work.

Dean was still sleeping, snoring softly, his limbs relaxed in a way they rarely were when he was awake. The gentle fan of his eyelashes stood in stark contrast to his pale skin, the purple bruises under his eyes. Sam wondered how long it had been since he'd slept well.

He understood his brother like he hadn't before. In that frozen cabin Dean's silence had felt like betrayal, like a confirmation of Sam's worthlessness. And maybe it still did. But now Sam could see Dean's fear of loneliness, his frantic need to cling to family, to place. Self-identity defined by duty. And he'd given it up for Sam.

For a year their father's shadow had haunted them, an exoskeleton of anger and isolation they'd only just begun to crack. And the guilt, shame excised from its religious cocoon, creeping through defenseless marrow. No reason for it, no weapons to fight it. And now John was back.

Sam stood and brushed off his clothes. Sniffed himself a little, figured he didn't need to change. He stared down at his sleeping brother and considered waking him, but decided against it. Dean could use a few more hours.

The cafe where Benny worked wasn't much to look at, just a tiny shack of clapboard and brick surrounded by the ever-present bicycles. The food was good though—pancakes all day and homemade sausage, and coffee strong enough to strip paint. The whole street smelled of pork fat and garlic.

Sam sat at the counter and fingered the change in his pocket. Not enough for a meal. He ordered a coffee from the blue-haired waitress, ignored her impatient gum-snapping. Irritated over the loss of a tip, most likely. Whatever. Life sucks and then you die, right? He'd read that somewhere.

It was Benny who brought him his coffee, lips pulled tight in a grim line. He set the mug in front of Sam and leaned against the counter. Waited.

A year ago, Sam would have been frozen by the expectation of speech. But a year was a long time. "You ok?" he asked.

Benny snorted, looked away. "Sure," he said, staring out the window. The muscles of his jaw were twitching, anger and something else fighting for dominance. Sam reached for his coffee, figured he'd give Benny whatever time he needed. It didn't take long: "Momma's dead."

Sam's fingers froze around his mug. "What?"

"Fever," Benny said. "This past winter. She didn't make it."

Sam took a deep breath. "Jesus, Benny," he said. "I'm sorry."

Benny said nothing, just poured a coffee for himself and joined Sam at the counter. They sat for awhile, clutching their mugs, and Sam felt grateful for the distraction of the familiar ritual, sharing caffeine in lieu of conversation. Take a sip, swallow, relish the burn down the length of your throat. Measure by measure, step by step. An equation with guaranteed outcome. Sam figured a lot of human behavior was like that, patterns worn by years of tradition, wards against unnecessary thought. Easier that way.

He could hear the traffic outside, the passing boats on the river. Familiar soundtrack to their lives, disjointed now. He wondered what it was like to know a mother, to lose her. Wished there was something useful to say.

Benny took sympathy on him, or else grew tired of the tension himself. "Well Sam, I gotta get back to work. Coffee's on the house, much as you want." Sam nodded his thanks and stood to leave, stopped by Benny's warm hand on his shoulder.

"Sam," Benny said, and his voice fractured in the hum of the diner, bits and fragments echoing against the walls like he meant more, somehow. He looked at Sam, then away. "Just—just take care of yourself, ok?"

Sam blinked, stepped back. "Yeah. Yeah, ok, Benny." Benny squeezed his shoulder and walked away. Sam stood frozen, bewildered, unable to explain or ignore the quiet dread settling inside him. Hoped he'd never hear a voice that broken again.

* * *

A few days later, John showed up at the gym. Dean was cleaning the showers, picking long, slimy hairs from the drain that coiled around his fingers when he tried to drop them into the trashcan. His lips curled up in disgust. At least Terry'd given him gloves.

He shook the last of it free just as the door opened behind him, and winced. He hadn't quite adjusted to this part, scrubbing tile and emptying trash bins while wet, naked gym rats strutted around. He had a little sign to use when he cleaned the women's locker rooms, but when he'd tried to set it up outside the men's, Terry'd just raised an incredulous eyebrow and stared at him.

So he did the best he could and tried to avoid looking.

Twice a week Benny met him here, joined him and Sam and Terry for training, as Terry called it. It was fun—wrestling together, taking turns in the ring. Just brotherly competition. Afterward, though, the three of them would come spread out under the showerheads, Sam on one side, Benny on the other. Sam was one thing—he'd seen his brother naked more times than he could count. Close quarters and basic amenities had ensured that. But never anyone else, never anyone whose figure frequented his mind when he lay alone in the dark, one shameful hand down the front of his pants.

He shook his head, ignored the heat he felt creeping up his cheeks. He wasn't stupid; Benny'd made his interest about as clear as he could without shoving it in Dean's face. But Dean knew Benny, knew his potential, what he deserved. And it wasn't a one-time romp in the hay, even if Dean could ever bring himself to try. Sometimes, in his fragile moments of loneliness and longing for something better for himself, for Sammy, he let himself consider it. But then all he could see was Benny's bright, hopeful eyes, his vulnerable shoulders. The blunt lines of revulsion in his father's face. He had no idea what Sam would think, his moody, wounded little brother who shook his fist in the face of the world like it might just leave him alone that way. And he couldn't do it, couldn't risk picking at the feeble threads of their stability, unravelling the whole thing.

The man who'd entered the bathroom hadn't moved from the doorway, and Dean jerked at the sudden awareness of eyes prickling at the back of his neck. His stomach churned; he hadn't grown accustomed to this part, either. He should have, by now. Sam certainly had. It didn't seem to bother his brother; Sam just glared at anyone who looked at him sideways until they backed down.

He looked up, ready to offer his best imitation Sam-face, and stopped. John was grinning; he'd seen the flinch and had known what it meant, hadn't bothered to put Dean at ease. Dean sighed and wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "You can't be here, Dad."

John cocked his head. "And why's that, Dean?"

"I work here. I need this job. Just—" he let out a breath, swallowed his exasperation. "I get off at noon. I'll meet you for lunch, ok?"

John's eyes were twinkling. Dean felt sick. "All right, son. Sounds good." He pressed a piece of paper into Dean's hand, closed Dean's fingers around it. "My address. Got myself a place of my own. And Dean?" He stepped back and winked. "Bring your brother."

The door closed behind him. Dean stared at the bootprints John had left on the floor, slick, grainy stamps of mud on clean white. Sam would come if Dean asked him, would do anything at all that Dean wanted. Except talk, of course. Dean sighed. He could barely get three words out of Sam most days.

He bent to mop up the mud, glanced around. The bathroom looked decent enough, and Terry would let him take off early if he asked. Might as well round up Sam, give him some warning before dragging him off to see their father.

He found Sam stretched on a mat in the gym doing situps, an old, sweaty t-shirt clinging to his adolescent muscles. Sam's eyes were clenched shut and fluttering beneath his eyelids. Dean nudged him with his foot. "Dude," he said. "You stink."

Sam opened one eye and huffed. "What do you want?" he asked brusquely, sitting up and rolling his shoulders.

"I gotta talk to you, but I'd rather you not smell like a barn while I do it. C'mon. Let's get you in the shower." Sam shot him a dirty look, but Dean ignored it. He'd need whatever goodwill Sam had left later.

Sam showered while Dean waited on a bench outside the bathroom. He tapped his foot a little, hummed the tune of that song Benny was always singing, Ponchartrain something. Sad fucking song. Thought about getting some coffee, or maybe just skipping the whole deal entirely and letting John stew. It would serve him right.

Sam finally came out, dressed in clean clothes, thank God. Dean called to Luce on the way out, let her know he was leaving early, would make up the time tomorrow. "Sure thing," she said, rolling her eyes. "Don't you worry about us. We'll be fine. Customer catches pneumonia from our filthy bathroom, no big deal."

Sam laughed. Dean squinted, confused by her reasoning from lunch break to pneumonia, unsure whether she wanted him to stay. He raised his palms in supplication and she batted them away. "Get outta here," she muttered, scrunching her face to scowl at her computer some more.

"Thanks, Luce," Sam called, and then they were outside, nothing left to postpone the impending conversation. Sam stopped in front of Dean, eyeing him expectantly.

"Yeah, ok," Dean said, running a hand through his hair. "It's just—it's something I think we should do, Sammy, spend some time with Dad. I'm gonna meet him for lunch today. Think you should come with me."

Sam snorted, a derisive _yeah, right_ obvious in his rigid posture.

"Sammy, c'mon. We're safe here, away from them. You know I won't let anything happen to you."

Sam just cocked an eyebrow at him and tightened his lips.

"Sammy, please." Dean knew he was begging, could see Sam's defenses weakening. He felt vaguely guilty, pushing his brother that way, but they needed this. He needed this. His family, together. "Please. It's Dad."

Dean watched the last bit of resistance drain from Sam's shoulders, could tell it had worked. Sam sighed, chewed his lip. Nodded once. He hunched further in on himself as they walked and hid behind his bangs, but it was better this way. It'd get easier for Sam, once they were all together. And John couldn't hurt him here.

John's apartment was dark and cramped and musty. He had little furniture, just a few straight-backed chairs around a table, a pile of blankets and pillows heaped in one corner. Everything reeked of booze and stale cigarette smoke, a rankness trapped inside by the caulked-shut windows. Sam ignored their father, walked over the the window instead and pressed his cheek to the smudged glass. His fingers were twitching at his sides, drumming out some rhythm only Sam could hear. John watched him for a minute, then turned to regard Dean.

"Come sit down, boy," John said, gesturing toward the table. Dean snapped to attention, hurried to obey. He placed his palms flat on the table and rubbed his thumbs into the sticky wood. "You too, Sammy."

Sam's eyes flashed to their father. Dean could read the irritation there, and something that might have looked like hatred had he let himself consider it. Sam threw his shoulders back and jutted his chin, but he complied anyway. He chose the chair next to Dean, crossed his arms, and scowled.

And continued scowling the whole time. John and Dean made awkward small talk over the force of Sam's glare, catching each other up. It was a strange conversation to have with his father—_hey, how've you been in the past year since we ran away from your drunk ass_—but at least Dean was trying. He shot an irritated glance at Sam, who patently ignored him. Figured. The only way he managed to interrupt Sam's death glare at John was by mentioning anything that involved Sam, at which point Sam would frown at him instead.

Whatever. Sam could be a bitch if he wanted. Dean had been holding this family together for years. He'd manage on his own.

Later that night, Dean looked at his brother, all sprawled out and snoring in bed beside him, and softened. He knew that Sam had been hurt, that he was asking a lot. But he couldn't give up, not on John, on their family. It was all he had.

* * *

By June, summer had clamped its teeth on rambling city, thick and heavy and wet. Sam's days took on an easy rhythm once school let out, mornings with Terry, afternoons at the bookstore, evenings free to wander the city. The apartment stood largely empty, Benny working, Dean spending every available moment with John.

Mondays, though, were Luce's day off. She'd decided months ago that Sam should come by straight after school when she was home. Apparently she felt he needed a mother, someone to cluck over his skinny ribs, make sure he was properly cleaning his ears. Once classes ended she demanded he spend the whole day there, and he didn't mind, not really. She told riveting stories, loved to cook, and didn't fuss when he spent hours reading in the big plaid easy chair that dominated their living room.

It was late afternoon. Sam had settled at her kitchen table, book propped on his knees, picking absently at the bowl of red beans and rice she never failed to produce. Long summer shadows blanketed the room, quiet lull of traffic outside.

The book was called _A Wrinkle in Time_, Pamela's suggestion. She tossed books his way every now and again, pretending she'd planned to discard them anyway. Sam never called her on the pretense, but he remembered her words to Dean the first time he'd met her—_Got some of my own experience with those wackos._ He'd never asked her about that, either. Folks should be allowed to keep their secrets.

This book was practice of sorts. Fantasy genre, easy to lose himself in. He closed his eyes first and calmed his breathing, took note of the sounds and smells around him. Anchors, Pamela had said. Non-visual clues. Apparently Dean's advice hadn't been half-bad.

The house smelled of sausage and spice, the lavender fabric softener Luce used to do laundry. Moss, mildew, old dust, like everything else in the city. A squirrel chattered angrily outside, defending territory, most likely. The squirrels didn't appreciate anyone else helping themselves to Luce's unripe tomatoes.

Sam opened his eyes, looked at the words, catalogued the feel of the paper and the shape of the carefully print ink. He started to read.

_It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground._

The words tugged at him, tempted him. He could see it—the rising storm, terror building with the wind—wanted to be out there in that wind, lashed with the trees and the racing shadows. Inhaled instead, listened. Quiet dust, chirping squirrels. No storm.

Pamela said it was just practice, this holding back, that he could let go once he'd learned to control it. He didn't want to let go. Facts, reality—that's what grounded him, what kept him safe, solid. No more falling, dissolving like spun sugar on the tongue. He hadn't slipped in weeks.

Luce came back into the kitchen and cuffed his ear when she saw how little he'd eaten. Sam smiled and took another dutiful bite. It was good, the kind of thing people meant when they talked about comfort food. He couldn't eat much, though; each separate bean and grain of rice settled heavy in his stomach with the weight of their decades of traditional union. If he let himself go, he could see her great-grandmother hovering over the stove, her face sticky with sweat, her apron waving in the hot breeze as she stirred absently at a pot of beans.

He sighed, closed his book, stood. Hair tickled the back of his neck, and he scratched it, annoyed. Too much history in this town.

Sam found Luce in her bedroom, kneeling on the worn yellow rug, her thin fingers rolling the beads of her rosary. He couldn't make out the words, some variation of French, probably. She'd explained the difference to him once: Cajun, Haitian Creole, Louisiana French. He couldn't remember. It was beautiful though, the soft, foreign vowels, the rhythmic consonants.

Luce and Terry were both Catholic, which had surprised him at first. He'd grown up with a vague awareness of Catholicism—the bride of the Antichrist, harbinger of the end times. An unholy mix of Christ's teaching and pagan ritual, working your way to heaven.

He'd seen the crucifix on the wall of Terry's office, the blue and white Madonna on their front lawn. Hadn't know what they meant, at first, not until he'd asked Luce one morning who that woman was. He didn't like the crucifix much, the long, jagged lines of muscle caught in permanent agony, but he loved Mary. Loved to look at her, standing there in the summer-browned grass, her hands outstretched in humble welcome.

He was pretty sure his mother's name had been Mary. Dean probably knew, not that Sam would ask. He'd overheard John muttering more than once in his sleep, calling to Mary, weeping for her. He figured it must be his mother John implored, not this other woman with her soft lines and powerful fragility.

Sam sat back at the table, picked some more at his food. Luce must have heard him moving, or else she'd finished her prayers, because she stuck her head out of the bedroom to peer at him. "You all right there, Sam?"

He stood again, arms dangling awkwardly at his sides. "Yeah, just gotta head out. Thanks, Luce," he said, gesturing at his bowl. "It was good. I'm just not that hungry, you know?"

She tightened her lips and settled her work-worn hands up on his shoulders. "Honey," she said, "You come back again next Monday, you hear? I'll fry you up some beignets, send you home with a batch for Dean." She ran her calloused thumb over his cheekbone, down behind his ear. "You see that daddy of yours again yesterday?"

Sam blinked, unable to remember telling her about the once-weekly family dinners Dean had managed to weasel out of him. Maybe she'd figured it out on her own. She could be surprisingly perceptive at times. "Yeah," he said, dropping his head. "Came by for dinner."

"You talk to him yet?"

He shook his head and stared at the floor, unwilling to meet her eyes, to read the disappointment there. God knew he got enough of that from Dean.

She grabbed him by the chin, turned him to face her. "Now you listen to me, Sam. You don't wanna talk to him, you don't gotta. You hear me?" He couldn't move, couldn't answer, pinned in place by her dark, penetrating eyes. "Now I don't know what happened," she continued, "But honey, I wasn't born yesterday. I met you when you first got here to this city, remember? And I've seen you come a long old way since then. Don't you let that man drag you back."

She searched his face another minute, then stretched on her tiptoes to plant a kiss to his cheek. "You take care of yourself, Sam. And come by the gym tomorrow morning, let me feed you some real breakfast."

"Yeah, Luce," Sam said, returning her kiss. "Will do." His voice sounded rough in his own ears, watery, like he was about to cry. He blinked, clearing his eyes, and saw for a moment another woman, Luce's size, but blonde, pressing a kiss to his cheek just like Luce had done.

Sam shot Luce a shaky grin, thanked her again, and fled. He needed to get to the park, to watch the sun set over the lapping waves of the lake. This house, this city—even Luce herself, sometimes—stirred too much inside him, threatened his tenuous stability. He ran, heedless of traffic, relishing the feel of hot wind on his hair, his face, the burn and stretch of his exertion drowning out the noise.

The lake was safety, distraction, the little dime bags he purchased from kids he recognized from school but whose names he didn't know. A fight, if he got lucky. Long evening hours high and hazy and numb, far away from Benny pining after Dean and Dean pining after something their father would never give. Away from the questions and advice and treacherous history. When the sun finally set, he could lie on his back in the cool grass, nursing a joint or bruised knuckles, it didn't matter which. And when the stars blinked into place in the night sky above him, he wouldn't hear their murmurs.

* * *

John was drunk. Dean knew he should leave soon, get out of his father's craphole apartment before his words slurred into bruising hugs and dripping sentiment. He'd gotten all the answers he could tonight. "All right, Dad," he said, grabbing John's shoulders and steadying him. "Let's get you to bed."

John mumbled incoherently while Dean tucked him in, his whiskey-sour breath filling the room, nauseating. Enough to turn Dean into a teetotaler, almost, or at least to make him wish John still felt the need to bother with pretense.

The night air was warm and welcoming, dry for once. Dean kicked at stones and bits of trash as he walked home, ignoring the cheerful greetings from his fellow pedestrians. Most of them were drunk, too.

He felt vaguely irritated, unsettled. He deserved it, he knew, playing along with John's games like he was. His father enjoyed his secrets, amused himself by dangling bits of information in front of his eldest son, snatching them back at the last minute. It had been weeks, and all Dean had learned so far was some of the hidden logistics that had gone into making their community work. Outside contacts, covert supply runs into town—that sort of thing. Nothing about their life before, what had happened to their mother.

Not that he even got to ask that many questions. He wasn't spending as much time with John as Sam thought, though he hadn't been able to bring himself to explain, not yet. Sam wouldn't understand.

John was a drunk, an asshole. Dean knew that. But John was also his father, his lying, lonely father who didn't have as much put by as he'd claimed, who needed a roof over his head, something to eat every once in awhile. So what if Dean had found a second job, had spent a few of his evening hours hauling crates down by the docks? It wasn't like it was a sacrifice.

And so what if he hadn't told Benny, either? Benny didn't need to deal with that, not with his mother so recently dead, his eyes still so sharp with blame for John. And maybe Dean didn't need to deal with it either, with the strange mix of pity and betrayal that stamped Benny's face any time Dean mentioned his father. Everyone making everything so fucking complicated.

A ring of kids had gathered in the alley outside their apartment, a few of their faces familiar from the times Dean had walked Sam to school. They were clustered together and watching something, whooping loud and heedless. Dean could feel the adrenaline buzzing off them, echoing against the brick wall as distinctly as their catcalls. He pushed past them, earned himself a curse from a disgruntled green-haired punk, ignored it. Something was wrong.

He caught the flash of a thick fist flying, crunching on bone, Sam falling to the ground. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, drowned out the cheers of the kids around him. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, just stood there helpless as the kid Sam was fighting stepped toward his brother, older than Sam and broad with muscle, and raised his foot to Sam's throat.

A blur of movement, someone screaming. Kids pressing forward, bloodthirsty and curious. Dean elbowed them out of the way, had to see, had to know, but there Sam was, perched on top, grinding the boy's wrists on the pavement. Sam leaned over and spat, blood and something else spattering around him. It was the other boy screaming, Dean realized, the other boy's blood on Sam's mouth. Sam looked straight at Dean, knew he was there. Grinned hugely, his teeth sharp and dripping red.

"Fucker bit a chunk off my ear!" the kid beneath Sam howled.

"Asked for it," Sam muttered, cuffing his head. He stood and stretched his chest, his neck, little hollow sounds of joints popping back into place.

"What the hell, Sam?" Dean said, finding his voice, finally.

Sam just shrugged, wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve, kept grinning. Dean grabbed his shoulders. "Sam," he said, but no more words would come. He checked Sam's face for damage, patted down his ribs. He'd have a nice shiner in the morning, probably be sore as hell. Nothing seemed seriously wrong. Not physically, at least.

"C'mon," Dean mumbled, and ushered him upstairs. He kicked the door shut behind them. "Get yourself cleaned up and go to bed. We'll talk in the morning."

Sam peered at him, that damned grin finally gone. Sam looked so young in the lamplight, big wounded eyes in the face of a child, blood still smeared on his cheek. Dean couldn't bear it. He shoved Sam toward the bathroom and planted himself at the table, head in his hands.

The water clicked on in the bathroom, Sam in the shower. Dean stood and searched the cupboard, pulling out the bottle of bourbon he knew Benny kept hidden there. A long swallow, burn on the back of his throat. He sat again, sprawled out. Almost kicked his feet up on the table, but stopped himself just in time.

_Not him_.

He could hear the cicadas outside, buzzing their protest to anyone who'd listen. They'd been loud, lately. Kept him up at night. Sam stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, staring at Dean. Dean held his gaze, the two of them waiting, silent. Hopeful or hopeless, who knew anymore.

Sam went to bed. Dean took another drink, and another. Listened to the cicadas. _What the hell_, he thought, and kicked off his boots, settling his socked feet on the table. It felt good.


	5. Chapter 5

_Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality_

Years later, when Sam was older and supposedly wiser (but really just as fucking confused as ever), he would pass his sleepless hours in bed trying to pinpoint the exact moment that had marked the beginning of his new life. A few years after that, when he actually was wiser and a whole lot happier, he would proclaim it a pointless exercise, like isolating the snowflake responsible for an avalanche.

But one way of looking at it was this: it started with a school guidance counselor.

By February 2001, while Sam was hovering on the cusp of adulthood and chomping at the bit for it, his classmates were wasting their time squabbling and gossiping and complaining about the hellish cold of a forty-eight degree day. Sam snickered whenever he heard them. He only bothered with his jacket here when it rained.

It wasn't raining that particular morning. The sky was blue and cloudless, the winter sun shining small but strong. Sam hummed to himself as he walked to school, between classes. Ignored his classmates. Business as usual.

During fourth period—calculus, one of the few subjects his upbringing hadn't predisposed him to struggle with—an office aide stopped by with a note for him. _Samuel Winchester to meet with the guidance counselor_, it read. _ASAP_.

Sam sauntered down the empty hallway, happy enough to escape the classroom with its yellowed walls and gritty chalkdust. He kicked a locker absently as he passed, enjoyed the empty thud it made. He wasn't nervous, not really. He kept his grades up and his head down, didn't get into trouble. Not at school at least. He'd grown tall enough that kids left him mostly alone, and the few times anyone had tried anything, Terry's training had served him well. It wasn't like he needed friends.

And besides, he knew the counselor already, had met with her a handful of times when he'd first started school. Annika Laurits, _Ms. Laurits to you_, first-generation Estonian immigrant. She looked like a bird—moved like one, too—all bone and twitchy child's hands. Her English was clipped and precise, perfectly unaccented. She was the sort of passionate, over-qualified woman who took on a thankless job and kept with it, who stuck out her tongue at despair. She'd been kind to him in those early, hazy days, patient with her explanations.

And afterward, when he left her office clutching the sheaf of papers she'd given him, he still wasn't nervous. Confused, maybe. A bit unsettled by her piercing eyes and pointed questions, the constricting labels she'd tossed about. And absolutely clueless as to whether or not it was a good idea.

Older, wiser Sam would joke to himself that she'd been an awfully small woman to be so portentous.

He ditched school early that day and went to see Pamela. His control had been slipping lately, spiderweb cracks of _small_ and _dirty_ and John's ubiquitous breakwall eyes. The message in those eyes, their shared, secret knowledge that Sam's presence made Dean less, somehow. Tainted. The one agreement he had with his father.

Sam shook off his brooding, focused on the thin beams of sunlight warming his skin. He stopped under a cracked green awning, passed some change to the woman panhandling there. She was wide-boned and mute, layered in castoffs, her long black braid draped over her shoulder. She winked at Sam fondly, always did. He came this way frequently now.

Pamela sat perched behind the counter reading. She looked up when she heard the doorchime, a weird conglomeration of spoons and forks that had confused the hell out of Sam the first time he'd noticed it. "Hi, Sam," she said, closing her book. Dust puffed out from the ancient pages, and Sam twitched his nose at it, remembered how much it had bothered him before. The dust was familiar now, part of the background. Homey, almost.

He sat across the counter from Pamela, selecting his words carefully. He knew Dean thought his silence was stubborn, that most people believed him to be soft in the head. It didn't bother him, really. They could think what they wanted. But neither explanation was accurate. He had all the words he could ever want, swirling in his head. Each one powerful and dangerous and flawed. Back in the mountains, the words had taken him places that weren't true, didn't exist, but he'd believed in those places anyway, because of the words. Now he tiptoed around his own head to avoid jostling the damn things.

Sometimes he doubted his sanity was worth saving.

Sam could feel Pamela nudging at his mind, tickling him. "Words strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden," she said aloud. "Slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, will not stay still."

He huffed at her. "Not really what I was going for."

"Still true," she said with a shrug. "T.S. Eliot, _Burnt Norton_."

"I don't know what any of that means." Sam knew what she was doing, prodding at him like that, but it didn't matter. Worked anyway. "And stop trying to irritate me into talking."

"Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future, what might have been and what has been, point to one end, which is always present." She poked his mind hard, driving the point home.

Sam flinched. "Quit it. And since when do you talk like the fucking sphinx?"

She laughed. And usually, Sam loved her laugh, the brashness of it, but it was softer today, and frayed at the edges. He peered at her, wondering.

Pamela raised her hands in mock surrender. "All right, grumpy. No more poking, I promise." She stood, started rifling through the cupboards behind the counter. "I'd like to try something different today, if that's ok with you."

"Uh, sure?" he said, caught off guard. There was something wrong, something wary in the curve of her spine. Her fake cheer looked a lot like bracing for inevitable hurt.

"Here, hold this," she said, before he could ask. She took his hand and tipped it upwards, placed a smooth, blue stone in the center of his palm. She closed her fingers over his and held them there, trembling a little.

"Pamela—"

"Chrysocolla," she interrupted. "Helps you focus. Now, close your eyes."

He did, tamping his unease back down into the pit of his stomach where he could ignore it. If she needed to do this, the least he could do was play along. She'd certainly done more than enough for him.

She brushed something soft against his fingertips, and everything went to hell.

There was a great rush of wind and suction wrenching at him, bits of himself torn off, bursting like fireworks. He was everywhere, nowhere. Sparks of images flashed on his eyelids, faded to black. He saw Pamela, red-faced, screaming in anger. An older woman screaming back. Church-bells clanging, silent. Pamela lay in bed weeping, a forgotten letter dropped at her feet. A blond-haired woman stared at him, sightless, her mouth cracked open in soundless agony. Hammers rattled in the mountains, tentative, growing louder.

A hollow man approached, two children with him. Turned away, came back again. And the fox was laughing, laughing, echoes of alien music against the mountains.

He slammed against it, furious. _Not real, not real, unwanted, unreal_. The mountains grew sharp in his vision, their outlines etched in unearthly precision against the sky. Too stark, too brilliant, branching into forked lightning, burning themselves out.

Feather-light ash rained from the sky, greyed out the world, and Pamela was watching him, piercing eyes, eyes everywhere. He snatched his hands back, dropped the stone. It clunked against the countertop.

_I'm seventeen. My name is Sam._

"Sam?"

_My brother is Dean. _

"Sam? You ok?"

_Hold on, Sammy. You gotta hold on._

He rubbed at his eyelids, cleared his throat. "Yeah," he said. He tried to stand but nothing happened, legs gone prickly numb. He settled for gripping her wrist instead. "Pamela. What was that?"

She looked less fragile now, the worst of it over. "Well," she said. "Consider it a test. Which you passed, by the way."

Emotion was flooding out of her, bleeding into his mind. Panic, relief. A twinge like guilt under his skin, worming through his veins. He felt her awareness of his presence, the sudden wall she threw up to block him. It crashed against his brain, launched chain reactions of piercing agony. He groaned. "Ugh. Sorry." He shook his head to clear his thoughts, immediately regretted the movement. Swallowed hard. "Test for what?"

"To see if you could pull yourself out."

Sam sighed, worked his fingers over his throbbing temples. "A warning would be nice. Fucking hurts, Pamela."

She frowned and grasped his chin, concern thick in her slanted eyes. The fox hissed in his head, sibilant laughter among the leaves, and he pulled away, forced his trembling legs to stand.

"Sam," Pamela called as he turned for the door. "Tell me what you saw. Let me help you interpret."

He shook his head mutely, reached for the door handle. It twisted just beyond his grasp, someone else's hand on the knob, and he felt it: shockwave of pulsing heat, thousands of needles stabbing, twisting. A girl stood in the open doorway, framed by the sun and robed in the stitched-up petals of mountain laurel, poisonous promise of life.

Sam blinked, stepped back. She followed him into the shop, into the shadow, a girl in a white sundress with green, hypnotic eyes. No cruel spring nymph beguiling him.

_Get it together, Winchester._

She cocked her head when she saw him, her lips curved in a haunting smile, and he ached for something he'd never before had reason to name.

"Sam, this is Eve, my cousin's daughter," Pamela said. There might have been a warning in her voice somewhere, but Sam ignored it. Eve smelled of juniper and salt, of the hot summer wind coming in over the mountains. Her lips looked soft and full, and he _wanted_.

She offered her hand. Sam took it. He felt inexplicably confident, capable. She weighed him with her green, green eyes, stripped off his armor and saw him, really saw him in all his strangeness. Her smile widened; something brushed against his mind, gentlest of fingers stroking, beckoning, and Sam knew she wanted, too.

"Sam was just leaving," Pamela said stiffly.

He turned to her, nodded. She could pause the moment, couldn't break it. "See you later, Pamela. And Eve," he said, grinning in his best imitation of Dean. "It was nice to meet you."

Dean knew right away, of course. "Well, look at you, Sammy," he said with a smirk. "If I didn't know you better, I'd say you met a girl." He was sprawled out on the couch, watching one of those dumb shows Benny had gotten him hooked on. Sam couldn't stop his grin or the heat that insisted on creeping up his face, and Dean full-on guffawed. "You did!" he crowed, delighted. "What's her name? C'mon, Sammy. Juicy details. Now."

Sam crossed his arms in a futile effort to hide his blush. "Eve. Her name, I mean. It's Eve. Pamela's niece or something."

Dean whooped and waved his arms, sloshing his beer on the carpet. "Way to go, Sammy! Did you kiss her?"

Sam startled. "What? No. I just met her, Dean."

"Well, come on. Did you at least get her number? Does she live around here?"

Dean was getting way too eager over this, nearly panting with excitement. _Fucking puppy_, Sam thought, but fondly. "I don't know, Dean. She knows Pamela. She'll be around."

Dean groaned in uninvited sympathy for Sam's sexual frustration. "Sammy, Sammy, Sammy," he muttered, leaning back on the couch. "Fucking hopeless." But his shoulders were looser than they'd been in months, and he looked happy.

* * *

Sam was drunk, buzzing with giddiness from the bourbon he'd lifted off Benny. They may have avoided this last year, endured the noise and smells and pressing bodies from the safety of their apartment, but Sam had no intention of hiding this time around.

Mardi Gras. _Bring it._

He didn't know where Dean was, or Benny, for that matter. He didn't much care.

Eve had been around Pamela's shop a few times since he'd met her, though Pamela always did her best to shepherd one or the other of them away. But he was meeting Eve tonight, and Pamela wasn't here.

So yeah, he was drunk. Whatever.

He'd spent the day with Benny and Dean, watching the parade. They'd stickied their fingers with slices of king cake, washed it down with whiskey, gleefully cheered on some old man who'd painted himself gold and was dancing for change.

And he'd managed to keep himself grounded, too, despite the noise, the liquor, the sour breath of his fellow revelers. More people on one section of street than he'd seen his first fifteen years of life.

By the time the sun had set, Dean had been sloshed, utterly wasted. He'd spent a good long time ogling some curvy college girl and ignoring Sam's efforts to move him along. She'd danced low to the ground, her hips thrust back and her legs spread wide, while her friends offered helpful comments like, "Fuck yeah, America!" and "Damn, that ass."

Sam figured there were some things he'd never understand about the outside world.

And then Dean had drunk some more, just enough to push him from horniness into sentiment, and Sam'd had enough. He'd let Benny drag his brother back home, thinking maybe those two could finally get over themselves and make out or something.

Sam paused in the alleyway where he'd agreed to meet Eve. The world was tilting off-center a little, and he tried to follow its movements with his head. Gave up when it just made the spinning worse. The brick wall behind him looked comfortable enough, so he leaned against it and closed his eyes. _Soon_, he thought. He watched in fascination as fireworks burst against his eyelids, purple and green and shimmering gold. It occurred to him that they might not be real, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Someone touched his arm, casual gesture that could have been anyone, but he knew immediately. He opened his eyes and met her stare, and it was green and hungry and powerful.

"Sam," she said, and he couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, because she was kissing him.

The wind howled around them, desperate and forlorn. Endless expanse of sand and air, the two of them, alone, together, her hands on his back and his in her hair. Sunset cracked the sky into magma, streaks of red on shadowed clouds, and the birds were crying, falling. He pulled back a little, smelled the salt of the sea but there was no sea, just sand and unreal sky. He pushed against it, saw his city shimmering, just out of reach. Eve grazed her lips to the shell of his ear. "Just let go," she breathed, and he did.

And now the wind was screaming, wet and angry and raw, and the ship they stood on pitched with the waves. Sam tangled his fingers in Eve's dripping hair and shoved her against the mast. She was panting, sucking hot kisses on the skin of his neck. He slid one hand down the front of her dress to palm the soft fullness of her breasts. The fear, the inhibition of the past five years all fell away, and he was drunk on its absence.

He barely noticed the changing scenery. The desert, the sea, an unworldly forest, a city built of sun-bleached bone. Eve was the constant, writhing against him. He kissed down her neck, her collarbone, unhooking buttons as he went. Her skin grew softer as he drew lower, the gentle swell of her breasts, her slight, round belly. She was bare beneath her dress, and he buried his face in the dark curls he found there. When he slid his tongue between her legs, she screamed.

He was learning womanhood as he explored her, not as mother, as stranger, but something far more intimate and fierce. He twisted his tongue and longed to know her, to smell her scent beside him in bed, to see her in the morning, sleep-mussed and bleary. To watch her swim in the ocean, curl sand in her toes, to press his mind on hers and feel it unfold for him. To share their secrets in visceral communion.

She moaned and pulled him up, licked her taste from his mouth. He felt her nimble fingers on his jeans, unbuttoning, unzipping, sneaking inside to grasp him. The world had been flickering behind them, a melting backdrop of shifting colors, but when he slid inside her, he saw nothing else.

* * *

Dean woke up the next morning in a haze of headache and stiff limbs, overheated from the body pressed up against him. He groaned and rolled over to grouse at Sam for hogging all the space, and froze. _Not Sam. Benny. _

_In my bed._

Not a thought he could handle first thing after a long, alcohol-fueled night.

Once he'd convinced his legs to hold him, he reevaluated. He appeared to have slept in Benny's room, though how he'd gotten there, he hadn't the slightest. _Least I've still got all my clothes_.

Bathroom, then coffee. Proper order of priorities. He thought for a minute he might be sick, right there in Benny's kitchen, but he managed to stave it off until the coffee finished brewing. He burned his tongue with his impatient guzzling, but at least his stomach settled some. The caffeine would start easing the headache soon.

Dean sat at the table and tried to piece together the events of the evening. He remembered the parade, that last hurrah of weeks' worth of partying. The sweet burn of bourbon caressing his throat. There'd been a girl, he thought, spreading her legs, making him ache. Sam had been there, too, annoyed and impatient, though for what, Dean didn't know. Nothing new there; Sam was a mystery to him most days, now.

And then Benny, sturdy Benny, hauling him to bed. Dean's fingers clutching, tugging, something sad in Benny's eyes, press of lips to make it better. The push and pull of Benny's reluctance, Dean's insistence. A sweaty tangle of limbs and kisses. He must have fallen asleep at some point.

Dean groaned, dropped his head in his hands. He couldn't deny he found Benny attractive, had wondered more than once about the hard muscle beneath Benny's shirt, the long planes of his back. How it would feel to run his hands down the curve and dip of Benny's spine. But Benny wanted something else, something more. Dean knew that, could see it in the sideways glances and shy smiles, the raised hackles whenever John came around. It wasn't something Dean was sure he knew how to give. And now he'd gone and—

Whatever. Too much thinking. He should probably go check on Sam.

The house felt too still, Benny snoring softly, no sound at all from his brother. Even the world outside was quiet, the whole damned city sleeping off hangovers. Dean padded toward the room he shared with Sam, pushed open the door, and stood there dumbly trying to make sense of what he saw.

His baby brother, sleeping sweaty as always, cuddled in bed with a girl.

Well.

Dean eased the door closed, went back to the table. At least this gave him something to think about that wasn't himself or Benny. He wondered what it had been like for Sam, realized with a start that his baby brother now had more sexual experience than he did. Dean had been popular enough with the girls back home, had locked lips with a whole slew of them. But there hadn't been room for more in the mountains, the threat of discovery too high, the village-wide innocence too carefully maintained. And then they'd come here, to this city built on sex and music, but his thoughts had been too full of Sam to make room for anything else. Protecting Sam, understanding him, breaking through those goddamned walls. And he'd been making headway, too, he thought, at least until John had come along demanding time and money and forcing those walls right back up.

Dean shoved the familiar thoughts away, knew where they led. More frustration, more guilt. Might as well get up and do something useful, cook some breakfast, maybe. So he did: mixed the batter, heated the grease. Bacon and pancakes, the perfect hangover cure.

The smell must have woken Sam, or maybe it was Dean's less-than-subtle pot-banging that did the trick. Whatever it was, he heard them stirring, Sam's sleep-thick rumble and the girl's laughing answer. She came through the kitchen moments later, dressed in jeans and one of Sam's long shirts, and helped herself to some coffee.

Dean looked her over. Brown hair, green eyes, red lips curved in a wicked smile. He turned back to the stove.

"So," Dean said, flipping the pancakes. "You and Sam, huh?"

She snorted, took a long drink of coffee. "I'm Eve," she said, setting her mug on the table. "You must be Dean."

"Sam talks about me?" He felt absurdly pleased by the idea of it, his little brother bragging on him to the girl he was banging.

"Oh yes," she said with a smirk. "All the time. Dean this, Dean that. I have to say, I thought you'd be taller."

Dean sputtered a protest, but Sam chose that moment to join them, grinning sheepishly and blushing like a teenager caught with his pants down. Which, well, he sort of was.

"So," Sam said, all sweet and shy like he hadn't taken a chunk out of some dude's ear just a few months back. "You guys get introduced?"

"Yup," Dean said. "Haven't had a chance to grill her yet, though."

Sam shot him a glare, and Eve laughed. "Don't worry, Sam. I've got to go anyway." She wrapped her fingers around Sam's hips and pulled him in for a kiss, and for a moment Sam seemed to forget they weren't alone. He closed his eyes and leaned against her, one hand sliding up the small of her back. Dean cleared his throat, amused, and then Sam was sputtering and blushing so hot he could have fried eggs on his face. Eve winked her goodbye and left.

"Jesus, Sam," Dean said once they were alone. "She's a little outta your league, don't you think?"

Sam huffed and wouldn't meet his eyes, toying with a loose thread on his shirt. "Come sit down and eat some pancakes," Dean ordered. He felt inexplicably awkward, an unwelcome voyeur warded off by Sam's stubborn shoulders. He hadn't meant to pry, dammit. Sam could have warned him. He glanced over at Sam to say as much, but Sam was hunched over his plate and stabbing his pancakes like they'd personally offended him. He looked nervous, ashamed maybe. Dean sucked the syrup out of his bite while he tried to figure out why.

_Oh_. _Right._

"Hey, Sam," he said, trying for casual and failing miserably. "You know it's ok, right? I don't care if you bring girls back here. Or boys. Or whatever." Dean's turn to blush. "Just give me a heads-up next time, yeah? Don't need the technicolor version."

Sam snickered and ducked his head, but now he seemed shy in the happy adolescent I-just-got-laid kind of way, not in the dark self-loathing of the religiously repressed. That was enough for Dean. He speared a bite of pancake, chewed it slowly. Sam followed his lead, and for a few minutes they ate together in comfortable silence. It was nice, this easy camaraderie, the two of them falling back into old roles like they'd never left them.

It couldn't last, of course.

Sam was washing the last of the dishes when the knock sounded. Benny was still asleep, and Dean rushed to answer the door before the asshole on the other side woke him. He wasn't ready to deal with that can of worms just yet.

John stumbled into the room the minute the door opened, reeking of booze and old sweat. "Rent's due," he said without preface. He groped for Dean's face, all drunk, sloppy affection. "Got anything for your old man, Dean?"

The dish Sam dropped shattered in the sink. John whirled toward the sound, grabbed Dean's shoulder for support. "Sammy boy," he said with a crooked grin. "Nice t'see you. Won't stay long, know you don't want me around. Just gotta talk to my son here a minute."

Dean watched Sam's face go pale, saw him wince at John's choice of words. Sam didn't answer, though, just nodded and turned back toward the bedroom. But his shoulders were stiff, and he couldn't have projected anger and hurt more clearly if he'd tried.

Dean took care of John quickly, sent him on his way. Hesitated before going to Sam. He hadn't wanted him to find out like this, from John of all people, but it was a conversation they needed to have. Might as well get it over with.

Sam was lounging in bed, his arms tucked up behind his head. He looked at Dean when he heard him enter, that careful, guarded slant to his eyes that Dean had grown to hate. Dean sighed and sat next to him, rubbing the back of his neck. Opened his mouth, closed it. Couldn't find the words.

Sam spoke first. "You pay his rent?" His voice sounded hoarse like he'd been crying, but there was no hint of redness around his eyes.

"Yeah, Sam. I—"

"How?" Sam interrupted.

"The usual way people pay for things, Sam. Got myself a second job." His irritation was growing, at Sam, at his own stupid sense of guilt. He was taking care of his father, nothing wrong with that. "Where'd you think I was going all the time?"

Sam sat up and hunched against the headboard. "Thought you were hanging out with him."

"Who, Dad?" Sam nodded. "Well, I wasn't. I was working my ass off to take care of my family. Someone has to."

Sam clenched his jaw, looked away. "You could've told me."

"Yeah, well. Telling you now." Dean wanted to fidget, didn't let himself. It wasn't an honest conversation, not really, but Sam didn't know that. Dean had been well aware of Sam's assumptions, hadn't done anything to correct them. He'd wanted to avoid this situation exactly, his father and brother demanding as always that he pick a side.

Sam stared at him, his shoulders slumping like he was twelve years old again, and hopeless. "Don't know how long I can do this, Dean," he whispered. "I look at him, and all I want to do is punch that goddamned grin right off his face. You keep sucking up to him, but all he's doing is leeching off—"

"Shut up, Sam," Dean said, gripping the sheets to keep from clocking his brother, from comforting him. "You shut your mouth. He's my father, and he'd be yours too if you'd just let him."

The look on Sam's face as he stomped away didn't bear thinking about.

Dean closed his eyes and stretched on the bed. He wanted to sleep, to lose himself in a few quiet moments of forgetting, figured he deserved that much, at least. But he felt out of place, irritated. Something prickling just under his skin.

He groaned and rolled over, forced Sam's face out of his head. He knew he was right. John needed help; it was Dean's job to give it. Sam just needed more time. He'd come around.

* * *

"I gotta go, Eve." It was April, spring blooming heady and full outside. The two of them were propped up against a wall in the back of Pamela's bookstore, Eve's head on Sam's chest, his hands rubbing circles on her smooth belly. She made a little humming noise but didn't answer.

They didn't spend much time there—Pamela's obvious disapproval saw to that—but the shadowed interior felt perfect that afternoon. They'd lazed away the morning hours by the river, kissing and touching and playing the little mind games Eve loved so much. _What does this make you see, Sam? And what about this? _She'd laughed and tangled their limbs together and told him to _let go, Sam. Just let your mind go. _A world of possibilities, that's what Eve believed in. No anchors, no fear.

He wanted that, the freedom. Had spent so long hiding and afraid. He thought about that moment he'd first seen the fox, how its bright eyes had burned straight through his fog, had demanded attention even while Sam believed it a dream. It was probably real enough, he figured, in one way or another. He wondered what Eve would make of it. He was planning to ask her to come with him—Dean, too, though Sam was pretty sure he knew how that conversation would go. He thought he might have a chance at least with Eve.

She was looking at him, he realized suddenly, all twisted in his lap with her head cocked and considering. Weighing him, assessing, just like she'd done the day they'd met. She was humming something under her breath, always humming, threads of music escaping like smoke, their shape so foreign and so familiar they made him ache. "Sam," she said, her lips curled in a wistful smile. Like she knew something.

"What song is that?" he heard himself ask. His voice sounded miles away, a distant background to her sinuous music, the buzzing in his head. She smiled and his vision swam, mirror-in-mirror reflection of lips and teeth, a thousand green eyes holding him. She slid off his lap and grasped his hand. "Come, Sam," she said, and he surrendered.

He watched as she led him, wondered what she intended. Her dress began to shift against the sway of her hips, and he found he didn't much care. She was darkness and light, the softness of a blade and so much power he could feel it in his blood, radiating through his body to the pads of his fingers, the skin of his scalp, the subtle thickening in his jeans.

He could run off with her, he thought, build a new life at her side if she would have him. The two of them, reckless and free, blazing through life in a world more colorful than most could imagine. It was a compelling dream.

But then there was Dean. Patient, persistent Dean who had only ever believed the best of his wayward brother, who had still managed to hope for love in a household colder than their mother's bones. Dean, who wanted nothing more than their family rebuilt and together, who had no idea that it was Sam who stood in the way of that.

Sam knew. John certainly did. Had for years, most likely. They were alike in that way, unable or unwilling to ignore the pieces that didn't fit. And Sam was a piece that didn't fit, no matter how much Dean might hope or pretend otherwise.

Eve tugged at his hand. The light disappeared through a narrow doorway, a shadowed hallway plastered with posters from another era, with flowered wallpaper faded and curling. The floor stuck to his feet as he walked, a steady, crunching rhythm to the wandering drift of his attention. He felt on the brink of something, a precipice, or a summit. If he could only let himself go, he could fly.

They were in a room now, dark and candlelit, burnt, heady incense clouding his mind. He couldn't remember her opening the door or lighting the candles, but here he was, perched on the end of a curtained bed, eyes glued to Eve's as she approached.

She was naked, her skin pale and gleaming in the candlelight. He skimmed his fingers along her waist, her hips, down the long slope of her thighs, up again. She spread her legs and straddled him, brushed her lips to his ear. "Sam," she sighed. "Let go."

And then he was naked too, and she was riding him, slick and wet and magnificent. He pressed his hands to the arch of her back as he thrust, learning her, becoming her, opening her mind and body and soul and joining it with his. She bit her lip and moaned, drops of blood rising to the surface, their mouths crushing together. Sharp stab of pain as her teeth gouged his skin, mingling their blood, and Sam was gone.

A wide field, grass stained red. He knelt before her and tasted her wetness, his knees slick with gore. He could smell her arousal, her revenge. Corpses littered the ground, the Elders, his father. An older woman he knew was Eve's mother. Their skulls were split and peeling, nothing but dirt now, helpless decay. Eve moaned his name and the air cracked between them, electric-blue and reeking of death, and she clenched her thighs and clutched his hair, and the earth trembled as she came.

She pulled him up and kissed his neck, his chin, while he surveyed their destruction. Together, they were untouchable, ineffable power in the palms of their hands. Never again would they have to kneel. He looked into her eyes, glittering like the sun, and saw his future.

Something flared inside him, then, hot and sharp and familiar. The frame of her world jolted like old film, a bad connection, struggled to stay in place. The din grew louder, Eve's triumph and a ruinous wail, but there was a voice in his head, and he could hear it now. _Hold on, Sammy._

He jerked back to himself, horrified. Eve stood surrounded by rotting carnage, cloaked in the ripe stench of ozone and blood. She clawed at him as he pushed her away, but he had been learning, gaining strength, and he smashed at her fantasy like a rabid thing, all that anger, the fear, the betrayal. He would not be controlled by her. The world spun as he raged, shredding and burning until all that was left was the smoky quiet of her bedroom.

She was silent as he dressed, eyeing him speculatively. When he turned to leave, she spoke. "Sam," she said, rising from the bed. "You don't have to do this. That was just one possibility. We can build whatever world you'd like."

His eyes when he met hers were hard and unyielding. "Goodbye, Eve," he said, and left.

* * *

When Sam finally got home it was early evening, the city revving itself up for another loud Friday night. It didn't irritate him like it normally would, all these people wasting their dull lives. He felt empty, drained, and when he opened the door to find Dean clutching his college acceptance letters with white-knuckled hands, that emptiness turned into quiet acceptance. He knew this was coming, knew how it would play out. It was nothing he didn't deserve. And all that was left was to go through the motions, say the lines he'd been given by whatever cosmic asshole was directing his farce of a life. It would be over soon, and there was relief in that. Sam was tired of the waiting.

"What the hell, Sam," Dean growled. "What the actual hell?"

Sam looked at him, smelled the fear on his brother's skin. He thought about saying it was all a mistake, that he'd never intended to leave, that he'd stay with Dean as long as Dean wanted him.

He wanted to. God, he wanted to. But there was too much here in this city, suffering and history and music and—and John. "Dean—"

"No," Dean cut him off. "No! Your family is here, Sam. Our home is here. You don't get to just, what, run away? Is that what you're planning?" Dean's chest was heaving, his eyes red and accusing.

Sam raised his palms to pacify him. "No, Dean, I—"

"When were you going to tell me about this, Sam? You were going to tell me at some point, right?"

"Jesus, Dean," Sam said, closing his eyes and willing himself enough patience to work this thing out to its end. "Quit interrupting and I'll tell you."

"Fine," Dean huffed. "Sit. Talk."

Sam joined his brother at the table, shuffled his hands in his lap. "Look," he said, meeting Dean's eyes. "I got some good offers, that's all. Something to think about. College—fuck, Dean, can you even imagine? Me, at college? I've got a chance to make something of myself, and I can't do it with Dad breathing down my neck. I gotta get away from him." Something to think about—what a lie. There was no choice in it, not anymore.

Dean looked dazed. "So you _are _running away. Christ, Sam, it didn't work the first time. Dad just followed us. He'll do it again, you know he will."

"He won't if you don't let him!" Sam was surprised by the heat in his voice, had thought himself long past that. But all the rage, the betrayal he'd felt at Dean's easy forgiveness came rushing out of him, slamming against the one person he didn't want to hurt, the only person he could.

Dean froze, worked his jaw. "I can't turn my back on my own father, Sam."

"You already did, once," Sam muttered. He meant it to be petulant, a cheap shot in a pointless argument, but Dean winced. He actually fucking winced. Sam didn't think he'd ever hated John more.

Dean slumped back in his chair. "That was different, Sam. That was me getting you out of a bad situation, not abandoning the man outright. Things've been good here. Different. Haven't they?"

Sam looked at him, his big brother putting on his brave face as he always did, working himself ragged to feed his whacked-out brother, his drunk of a father. Wanting nothing more than to keep his family together. Nothing more than the impossible.

"Yeah, Dean. They've been good." It was the biggest lie he'd ever told his brother, and likely unforgivable. But the board was set, the pieces already in motion. No moves left to make.

* * *

By the end of May, the days stretched long and bright, as hot as high summer in the mountains. Dean left the gym just after noon, exchanged the clean lull of sweat for the swamp outside. It felt eternal, inevitable, sticky salt on his skin, ache in his bones. Late night, too early morning, tired, always tired. He didn't have to hit the docks tonight. That was something.

He'd been proud at Sam's graduation the day before, his little brother accomplishing what Dean had never had a chance at. Sam had taken the stage, the diploma, beamed that dimpled smile to the crowd and won their hearts with it. They'd partied late that night with Terry and Luce and too much beer. Even John had been there, once Dean had cajoled Benny into allowing it. Sam had ignored their father as always, but he hadn't turned him away. It was progress. Dean would take it.

Benny'd slammed beer hard and fast, stared at Dean like he was something imminent. Their shared night went undiscussed, and Dean figured it was better that way. If Benny felt like bringing it up, he could. No use poking the nest.

Something was off with Sam, though. Dean couldn't tell what, but he could see it, thrumming just under the surface of his brother's skin. Sam barely slept, hardly ate, spent what seemed like hours in the shower, scrubbing himself raw. He'd been avoiding the bookshop, the gym, locking himself up in his bedroom whenever he wasn't at school. It worried Dean, of course, but he figured it would pass. Something was always off with Sam; only the what of it changed.

Dean climbed the stairs to their apartment, ducking to avoid cobwebs. It would be nice, he grumbled to himself, if someone would clean them ever. Goddamned spider invasion. The carpet crunched beneath his boots, matted with years of grime and dirt. Too little air in this fucking hallway, thick and choking, smoke and grease and unwashed bodies. Not like the mountains. He felt dizzy, removed, someone else's body climbing and climbing, too distant and heavy to be his own. Crunching boots, echoing footsteps. Snow on the treetops and Sammy's eyes, peering and foreign through thorny undergrowth. The feeling irritated him; he swatted at it, cursed the housekeeping again. Fumbled with the junk in his pockets. His key slid into the lock, turned the doorknob, sounded strange and significant in the empty stairway. The door slammed shut behind him.

Sam stood in the living room, his knapsack on his back and a duffel over his shoulder. His eyes were green, Dean thought abruptly, brown and green and flickering like tree moss set ablaze. "You coming?" Sam asked, and that fire caught in Dean's chest and hollowed it.

There'd been a time, he thought, when those eyes had tethered straight to his soul, a weightless shackle binding them together. _There'd been a time_.

Dean examined his brother's face, the stubborn line between his eyebrows, the color set high on his cheeks. No handprint there now. No baby-fat either, just razor cheekbones and bloody teeth and eyes that had been more familiar than his own, once.

He'd thought they'd settled this. Known they hadn't. Couldn't escape or pretend anymore. Sam was leaving, abandoning the life they'd cobbled together, and Dean didn't even know why. He'd left John for Sam once already, back when Sam looked so wounded and fragile it kept Dean up at night, long hours of worry and wracking guilt. He looked different, now. Stronger, more steady. Stubborn as hell and as clear-headed as he'd been in years. But John—John was fading, drowning in booze and loss and tedium.

It felt inevitable, the two of them like this, facing off in the darkness. John sinking below the waves; Sammy swimming for land. And Dean the rock, always, between them. Crusted with salt and moss, too much pressure, unable to split. It wasn't a matter of love or longing; Dean knew what he wanted, always had. But he couldn't rip himself in two. Didn't have the strength.

He tried to answer, choked on it. That most common of words, those simple two letters impossible as always to string together. "Sam," he stammered instead. "Sammy. Dad. I—"

Sam nodded, squared his jaw. Determination settled on his face, grim and intractable, filled the empty spaces where hope had been, before. Sam stared at him a minute, chewing his lip like he always had, waiting. His baby brother, that familiar dissonance of hesitant conviction, a statue dissolving in the fog. Sam's arms were around him then, anchoring, bruising. Someone shuddered.

"Love you, Dean." A ghost of a whisper, a life's worth of unspoken promise between them. The words shattered into echoes, distorted with the drag of their own weight. Too much reality.

Sam left.

Dean walked to the kitchen, made some coffee. Drank it dry-eyed on the couch. _Should go see Dad tonight_, he thought. _Make sure he's ok_.

Light pooled through the open window, gathered in puddles on the bleached carpet. Dean sipped his coffee and savored the burn. Tiny specks were drifting in the sunbeams, swarming up from the couch, coating the city. He watched one rise to the ceiling, flit down to the floor, dancing counterpoint to his breath, the breeze.

Two years they'd been here, breathing this city. Two years of sweat and sugar and smog. Time enough to learn its streets, its music, the faded pink-green glamour of another age. He thought he knew it well, by now.

He'd never noticed the dust.

* * *

Hush. Look. Do you see them?

There, by the bend in the river, splashing, splashing.

Wait now, and watch, while the sun sinks low and the old horned owl calls the stars into being. Shadows hide in the dark, they say, creep unseen through bladed grass, but if your eyes are sharp and the moon feels benevolent, you'll see them, there, stretched in the dew, twining their heartbeats together.

You'll wonder why they're here alone, these two little boys in the boundless forest. Remember they're but echoes, timid footprints on the world's memory. They fled these mountains long ago.

You won't hear their words. They don't belong to you. But if you're lucky, if the birds sleep still and the river mist rises, the breeze will whisper their names.

_Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children_


End file.
